Belfield Quay
SM32 - 16mm scale - 32mm gauge
Overview | The Layout | Trackwork | Rollingstock | Buildings
Trackwork
After taking up the BLR trackwork in the garden, I had a fair amount of Peco SM32 flexi-track going spare. The rail was removed from the plastic sleeper strips ready to be spiked to timber sleepers. The pointwork was to be handmade, with the rail soldered to Paxolin (printed circuit-board) sleepers.
My trusty 'Hudson Light Railway Catalogue' gave useful information about industrial pointwork. To produce the track plan, I had settled on 35ft radius points. I drew them up and tried to make some. Bang - mental block!! I couldn't remember what to do. I struggled and struggled, and to cut a long story short, it took ages and several discussions with friend Geoff to bring it all back, but a pair finally arrived.
When the layout was shortened, it was inevitable that the points would be too big and so a non-standard 25ft point was adopted.
One problem with the first points was that the Paxolin curled when subjected to the heat of a blow torch and the heavy rail. The points at Stonehenge were a mixture of steel plates to which the rails were welded all spiked to timber sleepers. The mix of materials was very appealing. The ornamental sleepers were much thicker than the Paxolin, so for the second set of points, the Paxolin was reinforced with timber strips superglued underneath. The shorter, 'chunkier' points were more solid and looked better.
One and a half points and a missing crossing. I really wasn't sure how to to approach this junction, but decided to build the second point and crossing 'in-situ'.
Talking about diamonds, this photo shows how the rails should be assembled. I would probably have been filing every joint to a mitre, but this should save quite a bit of time.
Well, I soon realised that I was out of my depth and struggling. I was convinced it would all end up in the bin, but with moral support from all quarters (thanks Geoff & Dave!) I pressed on.
There's just so much metal and bending flat-bottom rail puts such a twist into it that bits want to go off in every direction, hence it's all screwed down! Having reached this point (sorry) I realised that cutting every single rail break for normal electrics would leave me with what you would normally find in the bottom of a dried noodle bag - lots of little bits. So I've decided to tackle the electrification differently. There's only three routes possible through the crossing, so I'm going to try and switch the supplies through a single switch. I think a 6-pole 3-way rotary should do the trick. This reduces the rail isolation cuts to the minimum. I should say that Dave thinks I ought to abandon track power and go for batteries. If this doesn't work, I might just have to consider it.