As a bit 'get out of your comfort zone' stuff, I have spent the last couple of days learning how to make
pointwork. Unfortunately this has been in S scale, but fortunately this means its a bit bigger. The tutoring has been very good, with the added bonus of a stream of cups of tea. At some stage I'll write a post on how to go about this in a bit more detail. The method certainly seems to be a bit easier than some I've seen on the web (especially for forming the frog, which is a doddle), as it allows you to build track formations
tailored to individual spots rather than building track on a template that just looks like a brought switch. The results are beautiful flowing track that I'm looking forward to having a crack at in the smaller scale. It seems to be quite easy but I think
that's down to actually having the correct tools for the job, and the experience of the teacher. As for the
tolerances I think they work to far finer ones in the larger scales, where as we have the joys of running a wide variety of
NMRA compliant and
Peco wheels at the same time. I'm not sure what thats going to do to the whole thig. I've also just remembered that I have to get 8 coupled steam locos to operate through them faultlessly as well. How hard could that be....
Time to get Mr Woods to stock some code 40 rail. I also found some 3mm dark brown craft rubber at Para Rubber that is quite hard and should be good to use as a track base. It does however smell rather
solventy at the moment, and is sitting in the garage till it
de-smells a bit.
I've also been working on some wagons. I found last week in an old local rag a plan for a
Uc16 tank wagon with 2 domes. This has restarted my tank wagon build that dies the first time after I discovered I'd brought the wrong sized dowel. I started off by cutting the pieces to length and then sanding the dome shape into the ends. Its a bit of a challenge but quite a relaxing way to spend an hour at the workbench. I'll have to do a bit of filling here to fill up the end grain so that I can get a smooth surface.
The sides of the dowel were a bit dinged in places so I
PVA'd a layer of thin paper (in retrospect tracing paper would be better as its a bit stiffer) onto the sides.
'Crap Christmas crackers'
When dry this was painted black and, after the paint had dried, sanded back smooth for a second coat.
I have to cut up some 2mm
plasticard for
underframes (the plan say it should be 1mm, but this won't be stiff enough and but this is starting to look a nice straightforward project that will hit its Waterloo when I attempt to make the domes.
'Crap Christmas crackers'
8 comments:
I DO have some code 40 in stock (although it is weathered, and therefore a bit more expensive, unfortunately). I even found some 1mm thick PC board, so I can supply a limited quantity of correct-thickness NZ120 sleepers :D
weathered? browny? much better than painting and then getting the electricles flowing again... I'm surprised that Peco etc don't use that stuff in their track...
OOOh looks like I'm not the onlyone looking at code 40 for my layouts.
looking again today i suspect that most of the layout will be laid in code 55 (lots of heavy locos), with maybe a few sidings in code 40. still, it will look pretty.
you do relise code forty is still slightly heavy than NZ Rail, we would need code 35 by my calculations even with feilding Dx's
Update on the hand-laid track theme; I have found some 1mm PCB and successfully stripped it into 1.7mm wide pieces, so there is absolutely no excuse for over-scale sleepers now. Holiday project is to be machining code 55 turnout blade and crossing (frog) rails in bulk so everyone can build turnouts without all the hand-filing.
Pre cutting is only good if you are building fixed points like peco with fixed numbers. for me the beauty of hand laying track is being able to build for a particular location and radius. all the blades and locations for the stock rails alters depening on this.
Also, I've been shown a foolproof way to do the frogs for non standard track which I'll write up when I get to do it. Hopefully in the not too distant future as I started marking out track centerlines on the modules last night.
Well, to a 'point' ;-) Frog rails cut to 1:7.5 can always be opened up slightly to 1:7, 1:6.5, 1:6 even.... the gap between them is miniscule and gets filled with solder anyway. The point blades should really be the same regardless of the turnout angle, and you will probably find that they are turning out this way quite by accident anyway. NZR turnouts all used either 10 foot or 12 foot blades regardless of what the frog angle was, because the curvature is entirely between the blades and the frog. I will be attempting to build some for myself in code 55 over the Christmas break, so we will be able to compare techniques shortly.
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