12-19-2010, 10:33 AM
Steamtrains Wrote: ... I recall "helping" my ol' man build several turnouts back in the days when TV was in B&W...so I figured it was an easy task. Not so...I tried my hand at building a simple 90 deg. crossing and ended up with a jumble of track and solder splattered all over the roadbed. ...
Geez, Gus! That's like deciding you want to learn to ride a bicycle and buying a unicycle ... yeah, it has a rubber tire with air in it and you pedal it, but that's where the similarity ends!
I've been hand laying turnouts since 1985 or '86 and never had need of a crossing. But when I was building my version of "Third Street Industrial" and it called for a 30° crossing, I bought one!
Turnouts involve long sweeping pieces of rail, and soldering locations are separated from each other by a couple inches or more. A crossing involves many very short pieces of rail with the joints to be soldered only fractions of an inch apart. There are many crucial tolerance locations within extremely close proximity to each other! Crossings are not what I would suggest as a beginning track layer's project.
I have no problem laying a turnout by hand right there on the Homosote roadbed when I get to it, letting the stock rails flow thru it ... but a crossing? Nah! I'd have that thing fixtured up to within an inch of its tiny little life and be doing all the solder work on the workbench, installing it after everything had cooled down!
You might try giving a turnout another shot ... but leave the crossings for Micro-Engineering or get a BK Enterprises kit (do they even still exist?)
biL
Lehigh Susquehanna & Western
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
Lehigh Susquehanna & Western
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln