Garden Railway Forum

Hello everyone,
It's not often that I post anything these days but I have a question.
I'm just in the process of installing a passing loop into the railway using peco points and track.
Unfortunately in order to make the length of the loop viable for longer trains one of the points is rather difficult to reach.
It has always been my intention to spring the points in one direction (left) to allow automatic passing of trains when entering the loop.
Has anyone any ideas of suitable reliable ways of achieving this? I have several boxes of different tension springs which would be suitable. Is it recommended to remove the small spring inside the point itself?
Your thoughts and experiences would be appreciated.
Many thanks

I'd remove the stock Peco spring. It's meant to hold the point blades at either end of their travel, and would interfere with the your trailing point arrangement.

This subject raises its head every couple of years but I'm not sure anyone has reliably cracked it.
If you do a search for "trailing points" you'll get 20-odd hits going back to the forums early years.

Getting the spring tension exactly right is likely to be a tricky point (!) and of course you'd need to have s/s springs to avoid rusting up in a couple of weeks.

If you only want to allow trains to always take the same route depending on direction, then fixed blades with appropriate flange gaps and check rails, can work. I've got those on loops at both ends my line.

I just left my blade "free float" so that the train changes the point.
If you did that at both ends trains could pass fairly safely without operator intervention.
This explains the operation of the set I have on my layout.
https://ringbalin-light-railway.blogspo ... -farm.html

See ..... https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8718

Rik

You can remove the Peco spring and use a suitable tension spring to control the direction.

Many thanks everyone for your suggestions