Making Grade Crossings, .040 or .060" Styrene?


Trucklover

Trucklover

BNSF SD70MAC's
In HO Scale, is it best to use .040" or .060" Styrene when constructing grade crossings? It will be more then a grade crossing actually, more like laying it in a whole Intermodal Yard...

Reason I ask, is it appears that .060" sheets are quite a bit more price wise then the .040" 4x8' sheets and if I can get away with .040" and save some money then that would be ideal. I would measure myself but I dont have any .040" styrene on hand to do so :eek:
 
What code rail? Code 83, I think you'd want something close to .08" thick, code 100, .1" thick, but I haven't done this before so not too certain.
 
I think that you can get it as thick as you want to up to the height of the railhead. If the trip pins catch on the crossing at the height of the railhead, then you'd have problems at switches too.

A bigger thing to consider is the width of the flangeways. Locomotives generally come with code 110 wheels so you'd have to take that into account regardless of the width of the wheel treads on your cars.
 
diburning said:
I think that you can get it as thick as you want to up to the height of the railhead. If the trip pins catch on the crossing at the height of the railhead, then you'd have problems at switches too.
Click to expand...

That is true, I hadnt thought about that lol And about the flangeways, I plan on measuring the width of a BLMA Crossing and ripping the sheets the same width.

I guess I better go with .060" then! Going to .080" is out of the question at $38 for a 40"x72" sheet. Cheapest place I have found online so far is US Plastics @ $20 a sheet for .060" x 40" x 72". I tried looking at places around me but they are all around $45 per sheet and then I have to pay sales tax too plus gas to get there. Shipping at US Plastics is reasonable seeing how it is coming from Ohio here to Southern Cali at around $43 for 5 sheets of the stuff.

Anyone in the southern California area know of a good source for cheap .060" sheets of styrene? lol
 
Does it have to be styrene? A less expensive (yet probably less durable) alternative would be to build them out of cardstock, or some sort of plastic stock (like plastic playing cards, the plastic that comes in packaging)
 
Thing is, I am building a 26' Intermodal yard for a guy up in Canada and he has requested that the entire yard be made from Styrene lol. If it was up to me, I would just use WS Smooth-it for the whole yard
 
ahhh think I found a place about 5 mins from where i work! They have sheets of .060" for $16 a piece that are 12" x 48". Not exactly what im looking for but it will work, plus they have some larger square sheets for the larger areas that will have to be covered. I guess i answered my own question as to where to find styrene :D.
 
When I built mine they ended up sitting on top of the molded plastic spikes on the ties even after allowing for a proper flangeway at the rails. You'll want to measure from the top of those spikes to the top of the rail to see how thick the sheet needs to be. To secure them I added a narrower piece underneath that sits on the ties for gluing. That piece is as thick as the spikes are in height above the ties. I made up a small sample about an inch long and dropped it in place and then checked with a straight edge across the rails to be sure it wasn't too high. Once I had it right I made the centers for the grade crossings.
 
I used .030 for mine. code 100 track. gave enough clearance for the trip pins. got mine from us plastics, cheapest i found for the quantity.
 
Best bet is to get some evergreen styrene in various sizes so you can test it before you commit to buying a large sheet. It would suck to get a large sheet of it and find out its to big. I would also recommend getting a caliper as it will come in handy for a lot of other tasks that require precise measurements.
 
If you have to buy a lot of the stuff and want to use cheaper material, you can always shim it up to the surface height you need. In fact that might be better if there are lumps and bumps to get around, like those spike heads. But then again, you have to factor in the cost of whatever it is that you do the shimming with.
 
I'd also taper the ends down so that any dragging equipment has a sort of ramp to go up rather than slamming into the side of the styrene.
 
Josh,

You are building a 26 foot intermodal yard for some guy in Canada? Holy smokes batman!! That is HUGE!

I'm more interested in finding out how you will ship it to him?

WOW!
 
I glued .8 strips on top of the ties and then filled the area with hyrocal plaster. Cardboard has a problem with warpage, especially when water is involved. Phil
 
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