Heres an earlier piece of trackwork from Grassmere. The filed heads of the peco track pins are clearly visible. They are countersunk 1/2 way through the throwbar so one can imagine how much weaker these are than normal.
The top side. the pin (with the chemical blackening layer removed) is soldered to teh inside of the point blade. A notch needs to be filed through the 'foot' of the rail to allow the pin through.For some odd reason I find it very hard to get these notches lined up on each side. As you can imagine, this does take time. By the time I've stuffed up the throw bar once and buggered around with the notches, it can be 20 minutes to do the lot.
Ehibit B. Just soldering the point blades directly to the throwbar. Easy to line up. 2 minutes if I'm careful. Every bit of metal involved in this assembly has a bit of flex in it, so the weakest link is actually the chemical bonding of the copper layer to the resin PCB.
2 comments:
aha clear as a bell. But then your earlier photo showed all I see now in retrospect.
I really should read the warning label on my bottle of flux some time..
Quentin
Yes many different ways to do the same thing
I have tried soldering the rails directly to the throw bar (sleeper) in S scale
The point was operated by a tortoise motor which placed a fair amount of stress on the joint which eventually gave way - during a show to make life more fun
The method I use now is similar to the track pin idea
I clean off all the copper from the PCB except for two small squares in the centre through each copper square is a 0.5mm hole and soldered into this is 0.5mm brass wire
The wire is cut and filed flush with the underside
Then each wire is bent down to line up with the point blades and soldered on
The points on Kia Iwi have two tie bars built like this for added strength
Post a Comment