Hey All, I'm back to the track laying point on my layout, and I need to put in some more turnouts, so I thought I'd share with you all how I hand lay them. I'll try my best to explain all the steps I take, but I'm no English Major, so bare with me I named this thread the "old fashioned" way, since I'm using wood ties and metal spikes, not the "new school" way of using PC board ties and solder. Before we get into the dirty work, you have to ask yourself why you would want to do such a crazy thing! The selection of turnouts in the Atlas code 55 track today is great, and with their curved turnout coming out, that makes it even better. But the limiting factor to me is that you still have to design your track plan around the turnout sizes, and it becomes even more limiting when you want to model a section of the prototype as close as you can but have to compromise because of prefab turnout sizes. This brings us to the pros and cons of hand laying a turnout. Let's do the cons first. Time Consuming - on average about 45 min from ties to guard rails, compared to about 5 min to put down a prefab one. Materials - you need to have ties, spikes, rail, pc board, and (optional) jigs. All this needs to be bought and stored. Roadbed - Homasote is the norm and it's hard to come by. (but I'm going to experiment with cork and foam in this thread to see if they hold up) Time Consuming - wait, didn't I already put that? Now how about some pros Flowing track work - This is my #1 reason why I hand lay. Flexibility - You can put a turnout almost anywhere you want one. Cost - For the most part, it's cheaper than prefab turnouts, and the more you do, the cheaper it is. Reliability - You are laying the rail, so you can make it bulletproof. These are what I could think of, you might have others. Hand laying turnouts is not for everyone, as it takes quite a bit of patience to get them right. But with most everything, the more you do, the better you get at them, and the faster they go. My first attempt took me over 2 hours and it was horrible. I used way too many ties, didn't draw the track lines correctly, didn't bend the rails smoothly and had derailments. I ended up tearing it out. But it was a learning experience. With this tutorial, I'll try to show you how to do them correctly the first time, so you can avoid all the hassle. Here is a pic of my first attempt at the hand laying game. A little background... When I started using Atlas Code 55 track quite a few years ago (and a couple layouts ago), all that was available in turnout size was a #5 and a #7. I wanted to use bigger turnouts and also had a few places where I wanted to use a curved turnout. This put the idea in my head, but I really couldn't find much info on how to do them. Then while reading some back issues of Model Railroader, I came across an article in the December 1989 issue by Tony Koester titled "building a turnout from scratch". Even though he explains how to do it in HO, I thought I could try to do it in N scale. I must have read that article a million times! While I followed most of his steps, there was a few things that wouldn't work in N scale. We'll get to them later. Ok, lets start... The first thing that comes into play when hand laying a turnout is the roadbed. When I started, everywhere I read stated that I needed to use Homasote for it's ability to hold the spikes. Well 4x8 sheets of Homasote is hard to find in most places, and where I live is no exception. What I did find was Homasote, but not in full sheets. At a local building supply store they sell an Expansion/Contraction product that goes between joints in concrete. It comes in 3.5" wide by 10' long strips 1/2" thick. I don't remember what their name for this was, but it's normal Homasote, no question. Here is a pic of what it looks like: I know some of you won't be able to find homasote locally, so here is a company that sells it in strips: http://www.homabed.com/. This is a great option. Some of you already have cork or foam put down on your layout, so I'm going to do some experimenting with this other stuff to see how they hold up. But for this tutorial, I'll be using Homasote, since this is what is on my layout. Continued in the next post, I'll get into the ties, spikes, and turnout jig. -Mike
I don't know if I would use spikes, in N they have to be over sized. I use PC ties from fast tracks. This is code 55 N scale:
Oh Yes, I am listening.:w20z6q: I realized that I need a special turnout and a crossover for my new layout to work properly. Hope you don’t mind too many questions. :smile:
Ask as many as you want! Ok, next up is the ties. I use both the 8'6" cross ties and 16' switch ties from Kappler Mill. http://www.kapplerusa.com/y2k/p-n-ties.htm Get the standard size (7" x 9") The 8'6" ties are used for part of the turnout, and you can also use them around the layout for sidings or loads in cars. You can buy just the 16' switch ties, but you will have to cut a few down to 8'6" for some of the turnout. This choice comes down to how many turnouts you need to do. The 8'6" ties come in a bag of 1000 and will last you quite a while. The 16' switch ties come in a bag of 500, and you'll go through these pretty fast. Again, it all comes down to how many turnouts you will have to do. If you just want to test the waters, then get a bag of the 16' switch ties. The spikes I use are Micro Spikes made by Micro Engineering. These have a smaller head on them and are shorter. These come in a bag of 1000. A typical #8 turnout will use right around 100 spikes, so get as many bags as you think you will need. Micro Spikes can be bought at many of the online retailers. Micro Spikes and a 16' switch tie: Now that we have the ties and spikes, we'll need a way to line the ties up for the turnout. Setting the ties in line one by one is insane, so we'll need some sort of tie jig. I've seen many different kinds of jigs made all sorts of ways, so I went with what I'm comfortable with. I made mine out of a piece of 3/4" MDF, 3.5" wide by 18" long. I made it this long so I could put 2 #8 turnouts into it at one time. You can make yours to whatever length you want. I then added 2 short pieces of 3/4" MDF to the top and bottom of the flat jig piece for legs, and to make a "block" for the ties to push up against. See pic below. Using a piece of Atlas flex track as a guide, I drew a cut line across the MDF at every plastic tie. This was very time consuming. I left a bit of a flat area on each end of the MDF since I didn't need the cut lines to go right to the edge. I used a 7.25" skill saw blade that measures 1/16" wide put into my radial arm saw to cut the grooves out. The grooves were cut a little less than 1/16" deep to allow the tie to stick up some. Again, this was also very time consuming, but worth it, since I have many times put more than one turnout's worth of ties into the jig to make working at the layout go faster. Here are some pictures. full tie jig Here is a close up of the individual cut lines. A piece of Atlas flex track is there for reference. Note that the ties stick up above the rest of the jig, and butt up against the side of wood that the flex track is sitting on to keep the ties even. If this is too time consuming or out of reach for some of you, then here is another way to make a tie jig. Take a piece of Atlas flex track and cut it to how long your want your jig to be. Glue it down to a piece of sturdy wood. Take another piece of flex (or whats left from the first piece) and using a straight edge and a 16' switch tie, glue the other piece down while putting the switch tie between the pieces of flex and keeping everything at a 90 degree angle. The disadvantage about this is that you can only use 16' switch ties. Here is a mock up of what it would look like, just don't use tape! Next up is turnout sizes and using the tie jig and ties. -Mike
This is great! I started marking the MDF but since I don’t have a radial saw, I’m going to have to make some sort of indexing jig for the table saw. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with those spikes. I’ve never seen those before.
Great thread. Making these the old way will also allow some flexibility. Maybe a jig could be made from styrene. You only have to make one or two jigs. One for straight; one for curves; one for different tie lengths. After making a few turnouts, you would know what you need to make for your own purposes. Just thinking...
I am....confused. :tb-biggrin: I totally get hand-laying track. But your methods leave me confused. I don't get using the micro-spikes. They are still way too big to approximate real spikes and are very difficult to install. If we had tie plates and spikes that were close to real size (like the Proto87 folks) I would get it, but with no tie plates and over sized spikes, why take the extra time?
Flash, I never thought about making a jig out of styrene. That would work also. As to making a jig for straight or curved turnouts, you don't need to. I'll show you guys how to make a curved turnout starting with a straight tie assembly. Using just my one jig, I can make a turnout from a #5 up to a #14. No need to buy different jigs for different sized turnouts. Leo, as to your question of spikes, yes, they are a bit oversized. Its a trade off. Soldering leaves no spikes at all. I also find spiking easier than soldering. Some might not. Leo, if you would like to do a thread about how you solder your turnouts, then that would be great! I'm doing this thread to show people that you can hand lay turnouts easily without having to use solder or pc board for ties. There is no right or wrong way to do these things, I'm just showing everyone the way I do mine. -Mike
Again, these are a limiting factor in hand laying track. There are more templates available than a prefab turnout, but you are still limited to what they offer. If you solder your turnouts and do something like what Chris showed on the first page of this thread, then the sky's the limit. It looks like he is using a paper template of his track plan at full size. You can do the same thing with wood ties and spikes. BTW Leo, here is a pic of one of my turnouts. It's about an 11 and a half. Wood ties and Micro spikes. -Mike
I used to be in a club that made turnouts using the tie-soldering method. About 6-8 of us newbies would gather around under the tutelage os a senior member and construct turnouts. The parts were cut to be about a number six, but they were anywhere from 5.5 to 6.5 or so. In one hour the club had 6-8 more turnouts. Later, when the turnouts were put in place, the track experts would select a turnout from the assembled inventory and then adjust it precisely in place as it was to be used. They used track gauges and the soldering iron to precisely adjust the prefab turnout as necessary. This is sort of like pastoolio's method in that each turnout is really custom made for one and only one location on the layout even though the tie-soldering method was used. So, there are many ways to do things. Some modelers just like to hand lay track. It is really an art form and a model unto itself. I suppose this is off topic and my apologies for that. BTW, the club I am referring to was the Midwest N Pioneer club in the Chicago area. That was in 1989 and I don't know if they use that method any longer. We did have a bunch of members that had no qualms about hand laying track, though!
I drew my plan out with CAD by tracing over the prototype, then printed it out. http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/1476/28overheadrails_001crop.jpg All 16 turnouts were built as one piece, each turnout is different. Also for "regular" turnouts Fasttracks has a whole library of plans you can print out.
I look forward to the next installment. Mike, thank you for taking the time to photograph and post how you do these turnouts. I'm looking forward to trying both this and the pc tie method to figure out which to do on my next module set. NCDaveD
I am planning a few more detailed soldering demos. They take a lot of time to make, which is why they come out so slowly. It's really hard to get good close ups! I think my main concern with spikes would be durability, but then, I'm an NTraker, so I have a different durability concern than someone with a home layout. Absolutely! I didn't mean to suggest it was a wrong way to do things; I just found it odd as I perceive soldering to be stronger and at least as fast, if not faster. Your results look good, and they make you happy which is what really matters!
I just went to the Fast Tracks site and priced what I would need for my new layout and it would be over $800 just for the fixtures. That’s way too much for me to pay for a onetime use.
:tb-sad: Yep. The economics are such that you need about 15-20 turnouts of the same size with the fixtures for them to even start to make sense. I've pondered if a Netflix style "checkout" system would work, could be an interesting business...
