RSS Fetcher Posted March 5, 2015 Share Posted March 5, 2015 Although I haven't as yet finished all of the track work on Modbury, the parts that are laid will need ballasting before too long. This in itself poses a few slight problems, like what to use for ballast? But one of the things that I want to install before I tackle the actual ballasting is the Point Rodding - Yes, I will be putting point rodding on my 2FS layout!! A re-read of the appropriate section of the 2mm Association's publication "Track - How it works and how to model it" gave a potential solution, using various sections of metal strip with notches cut in the end and mounted upright in holes in the baseboard to represent the rodding stools. I also looked at Pete Wright's solution that he documented in the 2mm Magazine (Aug & Dec 1989 and Feb & Apr 1990) where he used N gauge rail with slots cut in the head for the stools. Neither of these solutions really appealed to me so I decided to devise my own method. I even drew up some stools in Sketchup with a view to getting them 3D printed, but ultimately decided that they would be far to fragile and could very likely be completely destroyed by over zealous track cleaning. Something soldered up is for me definitely the way forward. A look at some drawings of GWR rodding stools (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/1559-the-distance-between-point-rodding-stools/page-2 : Entry no 43) showed them to be around 7 1/2 inches high (including the top rollers), I decided that if I used 1mm square brass rod with a bit of wire on top for the roller that it would probably pass muster as a rodding stool. First I needed a jig so that I could consistently cut slots in the square brass bar, so I used Geoff Jones' idea of a butt hinge : Loading this jig with a length of 1mm square bar, and a few minutes work with a razor saw gave me a few slots at one end of the bar : This end had a upturned V shape filed along it with a few wipes of a file, giving me the embryonic rodding stools : Some of the slots were continued through to part off the individual stools, these were then soldered to a length of point timbering PCB (held down with a cocktail stick while applying the iron) : Once I have made hundreds of these little devils in various denominations of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 bays I will begin the task of positioning them at scale 6' intervals in runs from the (as yet unmade) signal box to the various points and FPL's. The rodding itself will be phosphor bronze wire, and hopefully it will all look reasonably realistic when painted red :-) Thanks for looking, Ian Attached thumbnail(s) View the full article Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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