An old piece of track, building your own track

[hayfield]

A packet of these arrived with some W&H sleepers, for quite a while (as I have had some of these from other acquisitions in the past) I wondered what these were for

 

I now know, but can some of the younger guess

[BernardTPM]

Wild guess - a tie-bar. Some kind of eyelet to solder the blades to in the middle pair and wire to a lever hooks in either outer hole?

[hayfield]

Bernard

Nearly right, that was my first thought when I had the others, but the holes were out of sync



it's a GEM sleeper where metal plates are crimped on and the rail is soldered to them, I think if I had to do that to every sleeper I would have taken up something else

[roythebus]

_{Nearly as  soul-destroying as having to glue half-chairs on the original P4 track!}

[Il Grifone]

Bernard

 

Nearly right, that was my first thought when I had the others, but the holes were out of sync

 

20140228_162024_resized.jp[attachment=389711:20140228_162024_resized.jpg

 

it's a GEM sleeper where metal plates are crimped on and the rail is soldered to them, I think if I had to do that to every sleeper I would have taken up something else

 

I remember them and thinking that assembly would be a chore, rather than a pleasure (plus not being able to solder at that age - a large  lump of copper in a gas ring! - I did try with spectacular lack of success, though dad could. At around 100 to a yard of track, iy was quite a task. Against this (and maybe because of it?) it was the era of the small BLT - usually GWR thanks to K's.

[hayfield]

With the GEM sleepers came these W&H sleepers



They seem to have been made off centre, and are designed for code 100 bullhead rail, much easier to thread than soldering up the GEM sleepers

[BernardTPM]

Much better!