It's way out of shape. What on this Earth can make such things happen? My first idea was to blame the lack of a gap at the join so I made one. This did not make the stock rail fall back in it's place one bit. Fortunately, there is very few things Krazy Glue can't fix. If that didn't work, the sledge hammer surely would have made that rail right again. If that would fail too then it's broken anyway, I'd have to buy a new piece. Thought I'd share my "woo woo woo" moment of the day. BTW. This caused my very first derailment ever. :tb-biggrin:
Ouch...most unsettling. It appears from your photos that your effectively have no gap there. All four rail ends on that end of the turnout are butted really hard against each other. I don't know what lies five and six feet on either side of the turnout, but it must not want to budge, and the weak link was the last inch and a bit on that one rail. I would guess that the spike heads are sheared off on one side of the rail foot, too. It would be best to remove the turnout, repair it, but don't do the repair until you have filed about 1/32" off the two rail ends...a bit more maybe, not more than 1/16". Straighten the rail, glue it with a couple of dabs of two-part epoxy under each spot supported by the rails, and weight the rails substantially...NOT heavily. Verify the gauge before you walk away and let the epoxy set over the next two hours. Ideally, you would have a block of wood or styrene that you could use to guage the rails between them, and have something substantial blocking them from the outside. As the epoxy sets with all the weight on either side, and atop them, plus the plug keeping the inner gauge, you would be confident of a solid repair.
Yes, looks like a victim of expansion. A lot of times that area where the points of a turnout move is left with out inside spikes to allow the rails to close closer together. If you can remove the rail from the turnout, you might be able to bend the kink out. And like Crandell said, be sure to add an expansion gap upon reinstalling.
Ouch, a sun kink in a switch. Not a simple fix in 1:1 or 1:87. Just curious, is this an Atlas switch?
Indeed there were no gaps at all. I made a point about getting a gapless double crossover to ensure a smooth a silk glide over all the various bits. I don't even have that. I mean, I hear the train passing alright... I seamed like a really good idea back then.. eek! Live and learn™ ..... aaaaand yes. It is an Atlas Code 55 #10 right hander. How surprising you guys just know it! :tb-ooh: I fixed it in the most cheap and dirty way: Xuron cutters and Krazy Glue. Bending the rails never worked right for me. I did not remove neither disassemble anything either. The turnout now shows various scars. Altho the trains are now noticeably noisier over that point, I could not make a train derail no matter how hard I tried. Pull and push at Mach 7; no problems. I even applied great sideway pressure on a car to make it climb the point to no avail. It refused to derail. I think it will be OK for a while.
I will have to try super glue, I have a switch with the inside stock rail that came loose and is going twards the outer stock rail. The points are sandwiched inbetween. It is a c55 right.
I really don't know for sure how it happened. The nearest heat source is a ground level plinth heater that is ~14' away from the turnout. The turnout is at the far end of the table by the opposite wall of the heater. It's set on 18 C (~65 F) all year long; I can't see that messing up a turnout like so.
Moisture content left the framing with the net effect of shrinking the space the trackplan occupies. Trouble is, the trackplan had even less space to shrink to because of tight joints. The result is what you see. Winter heating of any kind will do this, but the worst by far is what is sitting not 7 feet away from me and the 'puter...and only 20" from one corner of my layout...a hot wood stove. An El Cheapo thermometer/humidity indicator on the bookshelf next to me says the relative humidity is 35%. :tb-shocked: Strangely, this seems to have no impact on my wooden open frame bolted modules, nor on the spline roadbed comprising MDF leaves.
Well glad that you got it fixed, seem like to me that you did not allow any psace for expansion and contraction. Its always a good idea to leave a very small gap for that reason. A very small gap will never hurt anything.
It doesn't take much expansion to cause a kink like that--just a few thousandths will bend a weak spot just as you've shown. When it happened to me, I had to replace the switch.
I have just noticed the reverse of this happened on my layout. Not wanting to take up car space in the garage, but wanting those big radius's, I made the end of the "dogbone" split and fold down. Unfortunately I did it in 90* weather, and when it was in the teens last week the rail shrank between the brass screws and pulled loose from the ties in about a 4" section. It's a 28" radius and a good sized section will have to be replaced. At least no ballast or scenery is down yet... I'm thinking I need to shoot for about a 50* day to re-do it and maybe I'll have better luck.
I don't know how it is done in N scale, but I would simply use a dremel with a cut off wheel, and cut the rail, which would give it a proper gap, then re spike it straight. If it was still too tight, I would recut the rail a couple thousanths further back.
