Two track questions

[ICG/SOU]

Getting ready to finish laying track, and I wanted to go over a couple of questions:

1) how much of a gap between track sections (held in place by track joiner) is allowable? I imagine some of it will depend on the car/locomotive (with loose enough trucks), wheelsets (metal, mostly regular but few semi-scale), track code (100), and where the gap is on the line (near curves).

2) when track sections meet up, and one rail is a little taller than the other, what do you use to make them flush? Dremel on low speed? File? I'm talking 1/2 a millimeter or less, but visible.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Selector]

The gap that is allowable depends on whether or not the rails are likely to close or spread due to the effects of weather on the benchwork below them. If they spread due to humidity rising in the wood, what will the gap become? If you set them too close, and the wood dries a bit, in which case it will shrink and possibly close the gap(s), how much closure room will you provide so that the tracks don't buckle and end up snaking along your roadbed?

Ideally, you would want the thickness of a sliver of cardstock slipped between the two rail ends in any one joiner. If you solder all curved rails to keep them secure, then you may want as much as two thicknesses of cardstock back out on the tangent joins that are not soldered (...and should not be in most cases, just for this reason. You must leave expansion room and contraction room for your bench).

I do one of two things to match railhead heights. I kink the joiner or I file down the higher rail with a small needle file.

First, every single rail end, no matter where you have them, should have their top leading edge and the inside flange edges filed, or dressed, down by beveling them with a need file. The tighter your curves, the more important this becomes. But even so, get into the habit of doing all of them, even on the tangents. The net gain in derailment-free running is worth the effort.

But, you have taken the trouble to dress the edges and you find that one rail is noticeably higher. With the joiner in place, a thickness of two cardstock pieces between the rail ends as a gap, place needle-nosed pliers so that the bottom tine is under the lower rail and the top tine above the high rail and twist to get the two to match. Be bold...joiners are cheap...but be careful. Then, either jam ballast bits under the now suspended rail or slip cardstock under them to support the now-kinked joiner.

Otherwise, grinding down the last 1.5" into a ramp on the higher rail with a small grinding stone in a Dremel chuck would work....or hand file.

Personally, I do the joiner kink and support the raised rail method. Once you glue in the ballast, the shorter rails will stay put.

-Crandell

 

[UP2CSX]

I do it pretty much the way Crandell explained. I do go over every joint with a small flat file to burnish the rail joints and make sure they are as level as possible. I don't uses a Dremel tool because, even at low speed, you can remove too much material too fast. You then have a dip, which is worse than a slight misalignment in height.

Another thing I always do is file switcth points until they are almost razor sharp. Almost every switch I've ever bought has points that are too blunt, causing the locomotive to pick the points when it's traveling in a facing point direction. I've even gotten Bachmann E-Z track switches to work reliably by filing those points and also using a file to slightly widen the frogs. If you can get those things to work, you can make any switch work better.

 

[julienjj]

I do it pretty much the way Crandell explained. I do go over every joint with a small flat file to burnish the rail joints and make sure they are as level as possible. I don't uses a Dremel tool because, even at low speed, you can remove too much material too fast. You then have a dip, which is worse than a slight misalignment in height.

Another thing I always do is file switcth points until they are almost razor sharp. Almost every switch I've ever bought has points that are too blunt, causing the locomotive to pick the points when it's traveling in a facing point direction. I've even gotten Bachmann E-Z track switches to work reliably by filing those points and also using a file to slightly widen the frogs. If you can get those things to work, you can make any switch work better.

Im actually facing these problem with my atlas switches, their rail is thicker than flex-track so they need a bit of sanding at the joiner and the exterior moving blade of the switche isnt alway thin enough, so it allow any cars or loco wheel to climb up the rail

 

[stationmaster]

Im actually facing these problem with my atlas switches, their rail is thicker than flex-track so they need a bit of sanding at the joiner and the exterior moving blade of the switche isnt alway thin enough, so it allow any cars or loco wheel to climb up the rail

That's why I use Shinohara or Walthers switches made by Shinohara. I have a couple of buddies that use Peco switches too. These seem to be a much higher quality than Atlas. And I use Code 100 Atlas flex track.

I used to have Atlas switches, but I had too many problems with engines and cars tripping through the frogs.


Bob

 

[julienjj]

it clear that i will go with peco for the rest of my layout, they cost 5 more $ but the save in time worth it, for now i found a dremel bit @ the local hardwre store that easily allow me to make the frog deeper

 

[tankist]

apart of the non sharp point rails and the abrupt thinning of the stock railk rail near them (for the lack of better term), which i can live with, wheels are actually dipping at the atlas frog shaking the entire car while on shinoharas it stays on track and goes through almost quietly , just like in the prototype. the also look the best. but the conversion to DCC is TEDIOUS! i couldn't find any newdcc friendly shino-walthers in code100.

peco seemed not as precise of a frog and doesn't look as good imho, but saves on the conversion time and effort. won that 15 switch lot today and uber happy now i can continue with construction

 

[stationmaster]

Don't use a Dremel!!!!! Use a file. The Dremel will remove too much and can ruin the switch. A file allows you to be more precise.

Bob

 

[ICG/SOU]

Thanks for the responses.

What I have for gaps were areas where I was putting down flex track, and accidentally cut the rail just a little short. As a result, I'd have a gap of say up to 1mm, which looks really big, but didn't know if I should go back and remove the gaps. Most of my track joints meet up flush (how I was told to do it by local guys).

For uneven track, it usually happens where I've had a change in grade (sidings or spurs). I remember reading here that it is sometimes necessary to go back with a file and make it smooth and flush, but didn't know if it was always necessary to do that.

 

[UP2CSX]

Trey, a 1 mm gap shouldn't be a problem. Run an engine and cars over it and watch closely. As long as the engine doesn't hesistate and the gap isn't big enough to allow a wheel to drop, you should be fine.

For frogs that are too deep (assuming we're talking plastic here), you can cut .001 styrene to size and glue it to the bottom of the frog flangeway. Just keep adding to it until the train goes though smoothly through the switch. And I agree with Bob. Keep Dremel tools away from track!

 

[NYC_George]

I pretty much solder all my track together into 10 ft sections. When I solder a joint I put a piece of bass wood under the rail joiner, solder the rail and then quickly press every thing down lightly with the opposite end of a steel nail punch so the tracks are the exact same height. If one turns out to be higher than the other I reheat the joint and try it again. I then sand the joint with some 400 grid emery cloth to make sure everything is nice and smooth. Some people say don’t sand your rail at all. Went I worked for the railroad one of my high school friend’s job was welding ribbon rail joints. A number of times I watched him weld the rail and then grind everything down smooth. So I don’t think it’s a problem on a model railroad. Even though I use DCC a lot of my track sections are separated by plastic insulated rail joiners. I have control plans for the sections in the future. If you look at my City Planning thread there’s a plastic joiner right after the crossing in the photo. I have sections of insulated track before and after the station that will be the control for the rail crossing gates in the future. It’s better to install everything now rather then trying to tear the track up later on. If you look at any of my videos you’ll notice every train runs smooth even the 16 car 20th Century Limited. Good track work is the number one priority on my layout. The constant derailing of trains pretty much ruins everything.

NYC_George

 

[ICG/SOU]

Thanks everyone.

I was told by local guys to solder all connections, but I will end up having some gaps that I have to cut, since I've decided to get a PM42 and have 4 power districts. Hopefully those will be enough to help in case of expansion.

The only thing I've found that I've had to work on was not putting turnouts too close to a curve, as well as making sure the tight truck (I have one that just swivels, and one that pivots and swivels) on each car isn't too tight so that the wheels lift off the track when the car goes from the mainline to the siding/spur track.

 

[UP2CSX]

Trey, a couple of gaps is all you really need to take of expansion, so you should be fine. The biggest problems I've seen with cars not making it through switches is not enough weight and out of gauge wheels. Even good switches will perform poorly with these issues, and not so good switches will leave you with a lot of gray hair. I check every car with my NMRA gauge and have a small digital kitchen scale to check weight. I have some clunker Atlas switches, including #4's in the yard, and my cars will roll through without a problem. I think there's a tendency to blame the switch when the cars are the real issue. Not having a switch closer than one section of straight track before a curve is also a good one. I violated that rule on one spur that goes to my feed mill. Guess which switch gives me the most grief?

 

[julienjj]

i know all my cars are underweighted, i tryied filling hooper with one cent, and i noticed how easily they now cross any bad switch, even those bachman EZtrack

 

[ICG/SOU]

Thanks, everyone.

I figure when I put in my power districts, I'll have the gaps I need in order to account for expansion/contraction. My room is fairly climate controlled, and now that the hot season is yielding to the warm season, I haven't seen any issues with buckling or snaking track.

Last fall, I began to notice that (while on my temporary setup in the dining room) that the Blue Box cars would wobble some while the RTR cars would not. I bought a small kitchen scale and began to look at the weight of different cars. I also began to add metal wheelsets, and tighten screws. I added shims to begin to bring up some of the lower Blue Box cars, and now, everything runs well. Autoracks, which I hadn't originally planned for, give me a problem on one part of the layout (where the curve is a little too sharp...can't remove it without a major redesign) but then again, few people have perfect tracking with autoracks. I'll eventually modify them so the trucks have more pivot, and do as well as the 89' flats. I may need to weight them too, since they seem light for such a long car.