The Railway in the Valley of the Mill

[Trevor Thompson]

Looking back at the last photo, let me draw your attention to the ballast around the points. When I laid these points (about 12 years ago) I knew even less about what I was doing then I do now - and I made the ballast by mixing a mortar consisting of "chick grit" and cement. As in mixed up with water. I then laid the "ballast" and pressed the track into it. Well it worked and it has lasted. However when I came to lift the points I couldn't move the ballast.

I tried grinding it off - that worked - but was slow work, and extremely messy. I then got out a lump hammer and cold chisel. It was cleared up after an hour and a half of hard work. At least I got it up:

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So the moral of this is not to ballast like that.

My current technique is to glue the track into position with Gorilla (polyurethane) glue, mix 1 part of cement with 2 parts of chick grit. and ballast around the track with a spoon, and a brush to level the surface. I then spray it with a GENTLE spray from a garden spray nozzle on a hosepipe set to a soft "misting" setting. It seems important not to actually spray the ballast or the cement will be washed out. That ends up with a reasonably durable ballast which can be easily broken up if required, but lasts reasonably well.

I should let you know that I am aware of Peter's SRB technique - and I have tried it. I found that the difficulty of getting the cured SRB off the rail made it more trouble than it was worth. So I went back to my own method.

There is by the way a huge difference in final strength between mixing the ballast with water, and spraying the ballast after laying it. Mixing before hand requires a 5:1 ratio (ballast to cement) for a permanent result, and spraying after requires 2:1 for a much weaker result.

Now to the points. The first point completed:

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You should be able to see that this point is mostly fixed to the sleepers via plastic chairs. The "Frog" is a unit where the rails are joined together onto a brass plate by silver soldering. The chairs are to my own design and based on the 1870's chairs which are illustrated in Boyde's book on the Festiniog railway. clearly I have had to modify that basic chair to create the specific chairs required for a point. You should be able to see special chairs supporting the point blades. These are fixed to the rial by drilling through the rail, tapping the rail and then bolting the chair to the rail using M2 hex headed bolts. A bit overscale but it works. The check rails are supported on different chairs which support the running rail and the check rail at the correct spacing - all of the bought check rail chairs are made for G1 scale - so they are wrong for 32 mm track. There are also narrow chairs which are used where the rails are too close together for standard chairs to fit. Finally there are different chairs which join the wing rails to the point blades, and also support the outer running rails.

You should also be able to see that all of the chairs are nailed onto the wooden sleepers with brass pins. The hardwood chairs need pre-drilling before nailing.

I have in the past found it difficult to achieve the correct clearances for around the point blades - but I now have a technique which works correctly. I will explain shortly.

Trevor

[Trevor Thompson]

Building the points. I have downloaded templates from the 16mm Association website. I have used the template for the 4ft 6inch points in the past - in fact the other side of the building board has a jig set out to that template permanently set up. I now prefer the 1.5m template - partly because it has a more "narrow gauge" sleeper spacing, and also because it makes a slightly gentler curve, which will suite my articulated locos better. A copy of the template is taped onto the board, and a set of sleepers have been temporarily glued down. The sleepers were soaked overnight in preservative, and dried before use. The beech sleepers were kindly provided by Phil:

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I have decided that silver soldering the frog and the brass plate is not a perfect solution. It has the advantage that the wing rails can be soft soldered to the frog unit afterwards, but the disadvantage is that having annealed the brass rails and plate by heating them up sufficiently to silver solder them, it has softened them all. So they bend all over the place - and it is still difficult to soft solder the second wing rail on without releasing the first wing rail.

Hence I am going for a largely solder less solution. I have created a 3 D printed unit to support the rails which form the frog. I have recently learned how to accurately file these rails so that the meet correctly. I will come back to that. So this shows the two rails pushed into the unit which holds them in place at the correct angle:

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The wing rails fit up alongside the plastic spacers and are held against the frog rails at the correct spacing by separate printed pieces. That will become clearer as this progresses. It is an almost solder less solution - but you can see that I have soft soldered the two rails together. A small clamp held them tightly together while I quickly soldered it. It doesn't seem to have damaged the ABS plastic.

Trevor

[Trevor Thompson]

Filing the frog rails to the correct angle

Firstly bend the rail to the angle required for the wing rails, using the template as a guide:

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:
Then mount in a vice with the kink upermost:

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now file the kink out, trying to file evenly either side of the kink, until the file goes almost all the way through so that the two parts are just hanging together:

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The two parts can now either be separated, or bent right around so the two filed parts meet. I separated them so that I could push each part into my frog guide/support unit.

Trevor

[Trevor Thompson]

The first part of the point has been fixed down onto the sleepers:

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Note the joggle in the rail where the blade will sit. That was created using an offcut of steel with a slit cut into it. With the offcuts fixed in the vice the joggle was formed with the rail inserted into the slit and bending the rail by hand. The check rail was cut to length and the bends in its ends bent before it was assembled. The check rail chairs were slotted onto the check rail first, and then the running rail was pushed through the chairs. All of the chairs were added to the running rail in the correct order before fitting to the sleepers. You can see that the sleepers are numbered, an aid to putting them in the right order after they went into the preservative. Sleepers 3, 4 and 5 have the blade chairs bolted to the rail, sleeper 6 has a special chair which supports the end of the blade and sleeper 7 has a short chair, because the wing rail passes very close to this rail.

The next stage was to add the "frog unit" which you have already seen:

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The roller gauges hold the rail at the correct spacing while the holes are drilled into the sleepers and the chairs pinned into place.

Trevor

[Phil.P]

Impressive!
I would love to have a go.. If only to be able to say I had done it.

Time, is my enemy, mainly..

Keep posting, I find people's progress inspiring.. Even if I am not progressing myself.

Phil.P

[Trevor Thompson]

Impressive!
I would love to have a go.. If only to be able to say I had done it.

Time, is my enemy, mainly..

Keep posting, I find people's progress inspiring.. Even if I am not progressing myself.

Phil.P

Glad you like it!

Trevor

[Trevor Thompson]

Next I have fitted the point blade to the straight running rail, and the curved rail leading to the wing rail.

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Those two, with the rials on the frog unit define where the curved rail has to fit. So fitting the curved running rail:

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Finally the last blade and wing rail:

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All that remains is to refit the point operating lever and solder the operating wire to control the blades. In soldering the blades onto the wire it is worth using a vernier calliper or back to back gauge to ensure that the distance between the outside of the blades is no more than 28mm.

Trevor

[SimonWood]

Trevor your explanations are so good I'm almost tempted to try building points in this scale myself... (I've soldered together points in 4mm and 7mm scale but nothing as elegant or as robust looking as these!)

Meanwhile - some video from our running session 3 weeks ago. Mostly of Moel Rhos stock, plus some shots of Idris (including hauling the bug boxes along the level). Wish I'd got some more footage of the new section, ah well, next time!

[ge_rik]

Trevor your explanations are so good I'm almost tempted to try building points in this scale myself... (I've soldered together points in 4mm and 7mm scale but nothing as elegant or as robust looking as these!)

Meanwhile - some video from our running session 3 weeks ago. Mostly of Moel Rhos stock, plus some shots of Idris (including hauling the bug boxes along the level). Wish I'd got some more footage of the new section, ah well, next time!

Some really great shots. I especially liked the shot starting at 2:25. Could easily be mistaken for the real thing.

Rik

[Trevor Thompson]

Trevor your explanations are so good I'm almost tempted to try building points in this scale myself... (I've soldered together points in 4mm and 7mm scale but nothing as elegant or as robust looking as these!)

Meanwhile - some video from our running session 3 weeks ago. Mostly of Moel Rhos stock, plus some shots of Idris (including hauling the bug boxes along the level). Wish I'd got some more footage of the new section, ah well, next time!

You should have a go. It is the cheapest way to "buy" points!
Just in case anyone is interested in building points (or even track) this way I will put the stl files for the chairs into the files section.

The video is brilliant. Loverly nice slow running on both Moel Rhos locos. Pity Idris was allowed to go so fast - that detracts a bit. I blame the driver.

Trevor

[StuartJ]

I like the cab on the Regner loco! Very smart.

[Trevor Thompson]

The refurbished points and their track have now been relaid:

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Because of the way I had laid the track in the first place I had to put spacers under the trackwork I was relaying to bring it up to the same height as that which was already there. Luckily sleepers were the correct thickness to act as spacers. That just means the ballast will have to be thicker than I am using elsewhere on the railway - but that does enable me to put off re-sleepering the rest of the track in the station until later.

Changing the radius of the points also meant that a short section of new track had to be fitted to join the two points.

So back to wall building!

Trevor

[Old Man Aaron]

A beautiful result as always, Trevor.

[ge_rik]

I do love your trackwork. Smooth lines and very realistic.

Rik

[Trevor Thompson]

I do love your trackwork. Smooth lines and very realistic.

Rik

Praise indeed!

Trevor

[SimonWood]

Some really great shots. I especially liked the shot starting at 2:25. Could easily be mistaken for the real thing.

Thanks Rik. It's not just the realism of Trevor's buildings that help shots like this, but the placement, it makes it easy to have the goods shed in the foreground here, as if you're a 1:19 scale camera man peering round the corner to get a good shot of the track under the bridge...

I like the cab on the Regner loco! Very smart.

Thank you! I really must get on and finish it, it's been about 6 years since I made any progress and I really want to see it painted!

You should have a go. It is the cheapest way to "buy" points!
Just in case anyone is interested in building points (or even track) this way I will put the stl files for the chairs into the files section.

Thanks Trevor, one day I will get to this, not just for the cost saving but for the satisfaction (and, if I can produce anything approaching what you've achieved, the result). It may be a while though...

The video is brilliant. Loverly nice slow running on both Moel Rhos locos. Pity Idris was allowed to go so fast - that detracts a bit. I blame the driver.

Blame the camera man too - the camera work was a bit shaky on the Idris shots, because while driving and filming at the same time is a bit challenging for all the other sequences, it did allow me to set up shots that hide some faults (such as when the electronics failed in the Regner - which I hope doesn't show!)

The refurbished points and their track have now been relaid:

Looking superb!

[Andrew]

Hi all,

I've just watched Simon's film, and have to say that the whole line's looking wonderful. If I'm honest, I was privately sceptical that 3D printed buildings and other infrastructure would truly mellow into the garden as natural materials do, but I'm happy to admit that I was entirely wrong!

Re the points, that light train's trundling through it flawlessly, which is a whole lot better than my similar wagons go through Peco pointwork, although my lack of maintenance doesn't help.

Lovely filming too, Simon...

Cheers,

Andrew.