Track making/making tracks: the good, the bad and the ugly, advice and thoughts wanted, explanation is giving(incl mistakes)

JimmyB said:

Ensure:
a) don't contaminate each roll with particles from the other roll.
b) wrap it up tight to keep the air out.

As it is a chemical reaction, then in theory if not mixed, it will last a long while, however as with most things will "go off" eventually, had mine about 5 years since first opened and still good.

Click to expand...

When I first started with Interserve (based at Sandhurst) my shared PA was related to the makers of Milliput, and I had an unlimited free supply every time she visited her relatives in Wales.

Before i am going to wrap this all up and make it final, there is one more experiment in the make.
I really dont like those 3mm gaps between the safty rail and the head rails, nor the 3mm gap in the frog.
I am about to make some 3-4 meter lenght curve, with at intervals safty rails with gaps starting at 3mm 2,5mm, 2mm, 1,5mm and yes even 1mm.
For radius at 2, 3 meters and 5 meters..

I hope in upcomming weekend i can wrap it all up, with side notes, yes there are some tricks and pits

justme igor said:

Before i am going to wrap this all up and make it final, there is one more experiment in the make.
I really dont like those 3mm gaps between the safty rail and the head rails, nor the 3mm gap in the frog.
I am about to make some 3-4 meter lenght curve, with at intervals safty rails with gaps starting at 3mm 2,5mm, 2mm, 1,5mm and yes even 1mm.
For radius at 2, 3 meters and 5 meters..

I hope in upcomming weekend i can wrap it all up, with side notes, yes there are some tricks and pits

Click to expand...

Probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but the secret of the safety rail is not the gap to the running rail, but in the back-to-back measurement of the wheelsets.

Generally for 45mm track, the back-to-back is 40.5mm; so even the monster LGB wheel flanges can cope with a gap between safety rail and running rail of 2.25mm ..................... I think, if I've done my sums right.

But, anything less than that is going to cause running problems unless your wheels are to very fine standards.

I use standard LGB and Aristocraft (Bachmann now) track (oh, and one single USAT point) and I have quite a lot of Accucraft rolling stock with finer wheel dimensions (not fine scale) and everything runs through the standard point geometry OK.

Remembering your ambitions for a Russian monster steam loco, I discovered when I went to the museum section of a preserved railway, that 1:1 practice for keeping large, rigid locos on curved track is not to meddle with the back-to-back, but to increase the width of the tyre. I found this out because outside the museum, where the track was set in a hard surface, there was evidence of a loco wheel damaging the surface for an inch or two outside the rail head. I went inside the museum, and found the guilty culprit, 'Gordon' (from Bordon) a UK 2-10-0