Building chaired pointwork

[Taz]

For my 00 home based layout, Collaford, I will be making all my own pointwork. This can initially be quite a daunting task to consider, for someone who has never attempted anything like this before.

So I started off by getting hold of the Right Track 10 - Laying Terrific Track work DVD (highly recommended). In this Norman Solomon takes you through various ways of building points, including using C&L plastic chairs and components, which is the way I decided to go.

After seeking advice here I decided I would use exactoscale chairs and c&l thin timbering (which better matches the smp plain track I will be using).

My layout has been designed in Templot so this provided the templates I would need for building the points. I also bought some sample c&l templates as these showed which type of chair goes where.

To start off with the Templot template was stuck to a piece of wood, thin strips of double sided tape were stuck down and the timbers were laid on top:

 

 

I then turned my attention to the vee. I made a jig by gluing some balsa to a piece of wood, using the vee part of the template to measure the required 1 in 7 angle:

 

 

In hind sight this wasn't very satisfactory as the balsa is too soft, not holding the rails securely enough. For the next one I shall construct the jig out of some thick plasticard.

But I still managed to produce my first vee:

 

 

Next job was to thread the chairs onto the stock rail

 

 

I would be using standard chairs to represent some of the more specialist types and this meant that some of them needed to be trimmed and modified. This was done with the aid of a very sharp chisel.

 

 

Once the stock rail is glued to the timbers (using butanone) the vee is then added, using c&l gauges and then the other stock rail. The wing rails were next and these were the most difficult thing to get lined up

 

 

I cheated with the switch rails and used ready machined ones. I didn't have confidence in my abilities to file these to shape without the appropriate jigs.

 

As I was using c&l gauges, which are for 00 fine (14.8mm b2b) the resulting flange gaps at the vee were 1mm.

I want to be able to run r2r stock without having to faff about increasing the b2b. So to allow for 14.5mm b2b I needed to increase the flange gap at the check rails to compensate for the narrower gap at the vee.

To do this I made up a small jig out of 1.6mm copperclad. This was used to set the flange gap.

 

 

All that remained to do was the tiebar for the switch rails. This consisted of a piece of copperclad with two brass lace pins

 

 

The pins were bent through 90 degrees and trimmed down to ~5mm and these were soldered to the ends of the switch rails

 

 

As can be seen I slightly damaged one of the slide chairs whilst soldering. I'll have to be more careful next time.

 

Once it was finished all I had to do was carefully remove it from the template and put it in place on the layout.

 

 

I now have another 12 points and 2 single slips to get on with.

[trisonic]

Good job - it's great to try something new isn't it?

 

Best, Pete

[jamie92208]

That looks very good. One Idea that I've started using is to build the whole crossing assembly, including wing rails on a jig. I pin the template down then put double sided sellotape along the vee area and put three small lengths of copperclad where they come between the sleepers. The make the vee up in a separate jig. For that I use a piece of timber marked out with the angle and then drive 4 small nails in pairs to hold one sede of the vee and then offer the other piece of rail up, get it positioned and weight it down to solder it. After cleaing it up I put it on the crossing jig and solder the vee to the small bits of copperclad. Then use the gauges to put the wing rails on and solder them on. Obce it is all cleaned up then I file the ends of the bits of copperclad and take it off the sellotape and trasnfer it to the main point template after laying the first stock rail. This seems to work better then truying to build the points directly onto a Templot track plan on the baseboard.

 

Cheers

 

Jamie

[signalmaintainer]

Well, this inspires me to give it a whirl for the expansion of Ettinsmoor (still in the early planning stages. The appearance of turnouts on chairs can't be beat!

[hayfield]

That looks very good. One Idea that I've started using is to build the whole crossing assembly, including wing rails on a jig. I pin the template down then put double sided sellotape along the vee area and put three small lengths of copperclad where they come between the sleepers. The make the vee up in a separate jig. For that I use a piece of timber marked out with the angle and then drive 4 small nails in pairs to hold one sede of the vee and then offer the other piece of rail up, get it positioned and weight it down to solder it. After cleaing it up I put it on the crossing jig and solder the vee to the small bits of copperclad. Then use the gauges to put the wing rails on and solder them on. Obce it is all cleaned up then I file the ends of the bits of copperclad and take it off the sellotape and trasnfer it to the main point template after laying the first stock rail. This seems to work better then truying to build the points directly onto a Templot track plan on the baseboard.

 

Cheers

 

Jamie

 

I think its Jim of Birmingham New Street fame who builds up the frog assembly on some scrap brass/nickle sheet, he then files the sheet back to the rail sides. This raised up the rail so it matches the chaired rail height and you then can use cosmetic chairs.

 

Or use copperclad sleepers with shim soldered under the rails to raise the height to chaired rail height for the same effect. Again this will allow you to fit cosmetic chairs.

[Guest jim s-w]

Hi John

 

I do but it's not original. I dunno where I heard it from.

 

Great work Brian!

 

Jim

[Anglian]

This is great and encourage me to have a go. Thanks.

[MikeTrice]

In hind sight this wasn't very satisfactory as the balsa is too soft, not holding the rails securely enough. For the next one I shall construct the jig out of some thick plasticard.

Plasticard may not be very happy near a soldering iron. Can I recommend mounting board instead.

[Frank Elmslie]

Very nice Brian, so how many more do you need to build?

 

Frank.

 

 

[mudmagnet]

Brian,

 

Good to see your first point! I have recently constructed a C&L point (using of their complete points kits as a starting 'point' excuse the pun!) and found it all very satisfying. Overall such a huge improvement over the commercial points (nothing wrong with them as such, but I want my track to look better). I chose the ready made route for the crossing vee and blades as this is a good way to get started, but will make my own in the future. Several fellow modellers that I have spoken to use pieces of wood shaped to suit or others use the jigs supplied by EM Gauge Society or Scalefour society. I assembled mine over the template which had been taped onto a section of ceramic tile (a thermal tile, not the type used in a bathroom) - a piece of glass would be just as good - this keeps the point nice and flat when being assembled.

Running a wagon over the point for the first time is a great acheivement! Now all I need to do is make another half a dozen for a new layout - not sure what I will be doing yet.

 

Richard

[Captain Kernow]

Brian - very good work, not a lot wrong with that!

 

I would recommend some kind of soldered strengthening around the 'V' and wing rail assembly, as others have said, you can do this in a number of ways, I personally use complete copper clad sleepers in strategic places, these days I would insert a bit of brass shim to raise the rail (assisting the fitting of cosmetic chairs afterwards), but I've also soldered the rail direct to the sleeper before now, the cosmetic chair being slightly cut down in size to fit. You don't really notice the difference once the point is painted, laid, weathered and ballasted...

[jamie92208]

.

Running a wagon over the point for the first time is a great acheivement! Now all I need to do is make another half a dozen for a new layout - not sure what I will be doing yet.

 

Richard

 

That's the nice thing about building track, at some place in the construction it becomes a piece of trackwork that can divert a vehicle onto a differnt track. Very satisfying. Similar to when I'm building a vehicle and you get it to the point where you can put it on some track and actually move it on it's wheels.

 

Jamie

[Taz]

Thanks for the kind comments all.

 

I had seen the way Jim S W does the vee / wing rail basing and I can see where strengthening the vee area can be recommended. Unfortunately my soldering skills currently leave a lot to be desired and I worry about making a mess of it all. Hopefully I'll be able to get a bit of a crash course in soldering from Captain K at DRAG tonight (going to be having a bash at my first P4 compensation units) and if I feel my skills have improved enough I may have a go at doing them this way.

Norman Solomon (whos instructions i have closely followed) doesn't seem to think it is necessary, so there is more than one way to skin a cat.

 

With 12 more points and 2 single slips to do I'll have plenty of opportunity to practice different techniques. I am starting with the siding points first so by the time I get round to doing the main running lines I should have perfected the best method of construction.

[Taz]

Well, this inspires me to give it a whirl for the expansion of Ettinsmoor (still in the early planning stages. The appearance of turnouts on chairs can't be beat!

 

 

This is great and encourage me to have a go. Thanks.

 

All I can say is give it a go guys. It isn't half as hard as I thought it would be.

And if you get stuck there are plenty of people here who will be able to help you out.

[Sidecar Racer]

Nice work Brian ,

 

well done for taking the bull by the horns and having a go , the next one can only get better as you

learn from mistakes , and practice makes perfect as they say .

[Matador]

"Once the stock rail is glued to the timbers (using butanone)"

Excuse my ignorance, in the US according to Wikepedia butanone is called MEK Methyl Ethyl Ketone I normally use that for gluing plastic.

If that is true how do you glue the chairs to the timber ties (sleepers) ?.

DC Snr

A Brit in the USA

[craigwelsh]

"Once the stock rail is glued to the timbers (using butanone)"

Excuse my ignorance, in the US according to Wikepedia butanone is called MEK Methyl Ethyl Ketone I normally use that for gluing plastic.

If that is true how do you glue the chairs to the timber ties (sleepers) ?.

DC Snr

A Brit in the USA

This type of glue melts the plastic bits together, it can also melt the plastic into the grain of the wood creating a very strong bond.

[jamie92208]

This type of glue melts the plastic bits together, it can also melt the plastic into the grain of the wood creating a very strong bond.

 

It will also fix the sleepers to a paper template if you are using plastic sleepers.

 

Jamie

[Taz]

"Once the stock rail is glued to the timbers (using butanone)"

Excuse my ignorance, in the US according to Wikepedia butanone is called MEK Methyl Ethyl Ketone I normally use that for gluing plastic.

If that is true how do you glue the chairs to the timber ties (sleepers) ?.

DC Snr

A Brit in the USA

 

The sleepers / timbers are also plastic. The butanone is ideal for the ABS type plastic the chairs are made from. It melts the two together forming a very strong bond.

[R A Watson]

Butanol is a more aggresive form of M E K and works on the slightly harder plastic used in these mouldings, you may find in the former colonies it is sold under a different trade name.

 

Wally

[jamie92208]

As far as I know Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) and Butanone are the same chemically and are needed for the plastic that C & L is made from. MekPak was a proprietary product that for cvariouys reasons is not pure MEK but is aless agressive solvent that sticks polystyrene well but not ABS. I belive that butanone is also known as '1-Butanone' in some countries. MEK is a standard industrial solvent and it is usually available from most chemical suppliers in gallon containers considerably cheaper than from model suppliers. Our club bought some in bulk with no trouble and as long as it is stored correctly in proper containers there is no problem.

 

Jamie

 

 

[Stephen Freeman]

You might find something like Plastizap will work better

[PWSlack]

Well done.

 

What is happening over all those different wheel profiles that can occur in 16.5mm?

[Jon020]

At a similar stage with my first kit - an exactoscale one. Useful info here... thanks. Hope to complete mine as soon as missing bits arrive... and then sort out the tou bits which I've still to decide upon.

J

[bbishop]

As far as I know Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) and Butanone are the same chemically and are needed for the plastic that C & L is made from. MekPak was a proprietary product that for various reasons is not pure MEK but is aless agressive solvent that sticks polystyrene well but not ABS. I belive that butanone is also known as '1-Butanone' in some countries. MEK is a standard industrial solvent and it is usually available from most chemical suppliers in gallon containers considerably cheaper than from model suppliers. Our club bought some in bulk with no trouble and as long as it is stored correctly in proper containers there is no problem.

 

Jamie

Actually, it's proper chemical name has been 2-butanone for the past 40 years or so. And it's previous name was actually Ethyl Methyl Ketone, says Bill, who gained his Chemistry degree in 1974 and has by now forgotten pretty well everything that isn't relevant to railway modelling.