HOME"Leading The Way In Track Development"Taken from a series
of Articles that appeared in the 'Gauge 1 Model Railway Journal'
(1st Article) NEW SCALE RAIL Ever since my earliest days of Gauge 1 modelling I have always wondered why we had a rail section which bore little resemblance to the real thing in that the foot was almost the same section as the head. Why is it that we have much better sections in the smaller gauges, and even in Gauge 3 they have a far superior rail section? It is one of those mysteries from the dark past, probably to do with an old section from someone like Bonds or the like. As a supplier of rail, it is one of the most frequent questions I am asked from new comers to the Gauge; “Which way does the rail go up.” If it wasn't for the fact that the upper section is slightly wider, it could be used both ways, now for some in Gauge 1 this really wouldn't matter. It is a funny thing I have spoken to people who spend £4000 on a beautifully made loco, then are quite prepared to put it on anything that just resembles a track, and ballast what do I need that stuff for? When I entered the market in selling low cost track parts, all you could get was 1 yard brass or nickel silver rail, then came 1½ meters? I introduced the 2 yard and then the 3 yard rail; these longer lengths are extremely useful when laying track around curved work as the old problems of doglegging can be eliminated, and with the use of lost wax rail joiners and gauge widened track you can now achieve smooth running through curves. But, we are still running on that old section rail, called code 200. Could we not have scale rail? Could we not run both "Finescale" and the more commonly used "Standard (course) Scale" wheel sets without hitting the chairs? The answer to all this is, yes we can, but the main drawback has been the investment in new rollers to produce the new profile. These are extremely expensive, but once made in hardened and ground steel they should last a long time.
TOP - CODE 200 BRASS CENTER - CODE 180 BRASS BOTTOM - CODE 180 STAINLESS STEEL It was my
conversations with Simon Castens and his requests that I should do
something, which has spurred me on to bring this to realization.
We had to look at everything that was required, with a stream of emails
and calls between us to iron out the requirements. With scale
rail it would be the obvious thing to make this in nickel silver,
but unfortunately the price of raw material has risen by such a large
amount in recent months that this would make the price unattractive.
But there is a material which fits the bill; it is a particular grade
of Stainless Steel which will give us all the requirements we are
looking for. It goes without saying that the material is much
harder wearing than brass and so would be much more beneficial on
club or exhibition tracks where there is heavier than normal traffic.
The other advantages are in its appearance, as the steel dulls a slight
surface rust is formed, just as in the real thing. Steel on
steel wheels gives better loco adhesion as well. This grade
will conduct electricity for the 2 rail or stud contact people.
Another main advantage is in expansion and contraction rate which
is about 1/3rd less than brass. The only real problem which
I can hear you say is, 'Ah, but you can't soft solder it', but that
is not so, you can, it's just that you need a particular type of flux.
Tests were carried out and there are various ones available.
Soft and silver soldered joints have been outside for years now without
any signs of detriment to the joints. Next is the
rail section itself. My first thoughts were to take the most
common full size rail section 95R and simply scale this down to 10
mm to the ft., but life is never that easy. Annealed wire has
to pass through the rollers about 5 times to form the profile, which
for this rail is .95 mm in the Root section, to take it down to scale
thickness of .69 mm would require at least 2 further rolling passes.
Rail width is 2.24 mm both top and bottom as in
full size, the head is 1.15 mm with a foot of .66 mm, all the radiuses
are as full size. The top and bottom rake
angles have been adjusted for the thicker root section, and to hold
(2nd Article) DON'T LOOK AT THE LOCO, LOOK AT THE TRACK!
AND NOW......
(3rd Article) FINESCALE TRACK from CLIFF BARKER It's been some 10 months in the offing, but here at
last the finest track for Gauge one just got finer! The all new
injection moulded Finescale Tract. Why bother, you say? Well it
was there to be done and since I had the code 180 rail drawn for me;
it has motivated me to provide a track suitable for this. The
reason I started doing track parts many years ago was because I could
not get what I wanted for my own railway, I wanted white metal chairs
with wooden sleepers. I still think that the wooden track has
a really nice appeal, but even with teak sleepers, the maintenance is
a continual task, and the prospect of laying 32,000 chairs for the basic
layout was daunting. Most of this wooden track has now been replaced
with plastic.
 My brief when making the standard double sleeper unit
was 1) to match the existing sleeper unit but with a much finer detailed
chair and 2) for the rail to be held tighter in the chair so that the
gauge was kept. I think I have achieved this, but I still receive
the occasional comment that the sleepers are too hard to thread onto
the rail, oh well you can't win them all! I introduced the new
code 180 rail, the existing code 200 rail was over scale, ugly and awkward
to identify the correct way up, but it has served us well. It
was interesting to be able to use the existing standard sleeper unit
with the new 180 rail in it, and although it had a small amount of vertical
movement in the chair, it was still acceptable, the reduced flange depth
seemed to make no difference at all, and I was pleasantly surprised
to find that a lot of G Scale rolling stock also ran on it, this I can
only put down to the fact of a large Cone Radius, as the wheel approaches
the chair the radius lifts the flange away from the sloping chair side.
Having done the injection moulded 'Fishplates' for both the old and new rail sections, it was time to think about an all new sleeper unit specifically made for the 180 rail, but what chair design should I use? The choice was made for me upon a visit to Andrew Townley's garden, when I spied a Great Eastern Chair; it had been painted black with the writing picked out in white. G.E.R. 1905 T B S 95 lbs. Do you think I could borrow this? Off to Mike for the CAD design work to be done, consequently this spent a few weeks as a paper weight in his office! But, should I do this for 10 mm or 1 to 32? The decision was made for me as Mike had already scaled the chair down to 1 to 32. This gives us a sleeper length of 85.56 mm (yes we really are working to this degree of accuracy), a sleeper width of 7.86 mm and a scale thickness of 4 mm. I also had included extra alternative sleeper ends, so that the sleeper could be cut down to make an 8' 6" sleeper in 1 to 32 scale (80.94 mm), so get the Stanley knife out boys. Of course if you model in 10 mm this track already has an 8' 6" sleeper for you, what could be better. Now all of you, who have complained in the past about why we base the old track on an uncommon 9' 0" sleeper, can now complain that it looks too short now I'm used to the 90 mm length! With the rail now held correctly in the chair, there is an increase in flange depth clearance to 2.4 mm, that is without taking into account the wheel Cone Radius. Someone at the Reading show has already borrowed the track to check if the G Scale Accucraft loco would run on it, and he came back with a big smile, You're right, it will run. So at the risk of repeating myself, please get this loud and clear ALTHOUGH IT IS FINESCALE TRACK, YOU CAN RUN STANDARD AND FINESCALE WHEELS ON IT!!!  The wood block detail was to be included, but of course
as soon as I said this, it meant a side core action tool, this
basically moves part of the tool away, before the 2 halves open, sounds
simple, but adds a great deal to the cost and complexity of the tool.
A small benefit is gained here, as there is no core pin, the chair is
stronger. The sleeper has of course to be moulded singularly due
to the side core action, but I see no problem with this. The old
sleeper unit has 2 fixing guides under the sleeper, 10 mm from each
end, so that you can 'wallop' track fixing pins through the plastic
into the baseboard, this is rather a crude way of doing things and I
must say that we should be moving on from doing things like this, so
a fixing point was included to the inside of the spacer bar, just right
for a ¼" escutcheon pin with no more splitting the plastic
if you don't pre-drill the sleeper! The only claim to fame I have
in the manufacture of the tool has been the sleeper graining.
A piece of pure graphite was prepared for me and I took this home and
s pent a few hours engraving it ready to be sparked in.
I think that this has come out quite well, you can't see the actual
grain very well, but if you look on old sleepers, these have deep slit
cracking with weather worn grain, anyway I was pleased, when the first
samples were taken to the tool room, the comment was 'Grain looks nice'.
Fortunately John the toolmaker has a good sense of humour as I said,
'Yes this was the hardest part of the tool to get right, don't worry
about the engineering!' I said all along that if I did this new sleeper
unit, I would have the numbers and letters sparked into the chair; I
know most people wouldn't notice, but take a look, they are there!
So here it is then, available with 2 different grains, in 2 gauges,
standard gauge (45 mm) and gauge widened (45.5 mm), same colour as the
standard track (dark chocolate brown) with extra U.V. light protection
suitable for tropical conditions included as standard, hope you think
all the effort was worth it.Happy modelling. |
Each time the section is put through the rollers it work
hardens so the rail may well need to be annealed again combined, with
a risk of cracking and something called "tilt". This would
add to the production cost. There probably isn't any true section
rail available on the market in any of the scales, and the difference
is only .26 mm in our scale, and of course you can only see .13 mm
when looking from 1 side, that's about 5 thou. Overall height
should be 4.75 mm but after some little persuasion this was reduced
to 4.56 mm, the reason was that we would now have a rail section which
would suit both 
