Just print the whole thing.

[AndyID]

I'll probably get a bit of heat for this but please consider it, at least for a moment 😄

 

There is no particular reason for following prototype practice in model railways. It's the end result that matters, so why do we have to thread rail through chairs? The rail isn't even all that close to the real thing and they never did any sort of threading on real railways.

 

 

 

 

This is an example of what was possible a few years ago. It's 00 and there are a few things that are wrong with it. The rails were printed along with every thing else but the rail heads are a U shaped nickel-silver channel attached to the rail webs to make them conductive. This technique could be used on all sorts of scales, fixture methods, rail types, etc.

 

I should probably just give up .

[roythebus1]

I simply love threading chairs on rails....

[ozzyo]

I like fitting the keys into 7mm rail chairs and watching them ping off.

 

OzzyO.

 

PS. I am doing it on some of the point work on Lochmaben.

[Colin_McLeod]

Of course one could model the chairs and keys separately then it would not be necessary to thread rails into chairs.

 

And you thought ballasting was tedious 😄

[J. S. Bach]

I prefer tie plates; if I were to go that far. Personally, I just spike the rail to the tie.

[AndyID]

My goodness, how time flies when you are having fun 😀

 

I shelled-out for a resin printer quite a while ago and I really should get it going. As I already made this model it seems like a good place to start.

 

 

This was designed so that all the resin printed rails are capped with U-section nickel-silver but that's not really necessary for the check rails and most of the frog wing rails. I'll modify the rail heads in those areas.

 

The general idea here is that it's quite simple to produce a robust, highly accurate and detailed resin printed turnout by simply "bunging" a conductive cap on the rails.

[Sasquatch]

You might have seen that I got into bending proprietary turnouts a while back. I discovered at some expense that this won't work for diamond crossings. (It's obvious if you give it just a little bit of thought). Printing one out would be an excellent solution! I'm quite angry with Peco at present, there's much they could produce to expand their existing ranges (even get the retailers' shelves filled with out-of-stock essentials) instead of trying to re-open up long dead markets. Times are a changing, I must invest in a 3D printer!

 

Keep up the good work.

Regards Shaun.       

[AndyID]

4 hours ago, Sasquatch said:

You might have seen that I got into bending proprietary turnouts a while back. I discovered at some expense that this won't work for diamond crossings. (It's obvious if you give it just a little bit of thought). Printing one out would be an excellent solution! I'm quite angry with Peco at present, there's much they could produce to expand their existing ranges (even get the retailers' shelves filled with out-of-stock essentials) instead of trying to re-open up long dead markets. Times are a changing, I must invest in a 3D printer!

 

Keep up the good work.

Regards Shaun.       

 

Thanks Shaun.

 

You probably know there are two types of printer for home use. For the best detail you would likely want a resin printer but if you don't need that amount of fine detail you can get quite reasonable results with FDM (filament) printers. Here are samples of both (in terrifying close-up 😀)   They've been kicking about in my workshop for quite a while. The diamond is actually on a curve. Both were designed in Templot then imported into TurboCAD to add the 3-D elements. The resin turnout was printed at Shapeways. I think it's still there if anyone wants to get a print.

 

Martin Wynne has added 3-D elements to Templot which should ultimately eliminate the need for any CAD work.

 

 

 

Cheers!

Andy