I thought I would give some of you some news from my layout. When I had
my open house back in June. I had some trouble with a #6 turnout that
wasn't doing too well.
I thought, well, maybe it's time to do either some major repair work or
perhaps replace it for a #8. I got brave and went for the latter.
Several years ago I had purchased from 'somebody' a bunch of Earl
Elishman's (sp) turnouts in the 126 size. I had been selling some of
them, but thought I had kept a pair. It turns out that I only had a RH
and not the LH that I needed.
So I quickly made a backward tracing and started to build a LH #8.
Since the replacement was in a finished sceniced area inward of the
layout's edge, I knew things would be perhaps a bit difficult--boy was I
right. I started by removing structures, trees and anything else that I
could from the area.
I built the turnout on my workbench laid on a old Tru-Scale wooden
trackbed, that I purchased from Roger Nulton at last year's auction. I
glued down ties and laid the rail, drilled holes for wires and made it
pretty much a 'drop-in' for the new location. So far so good!
Next I had to remove the old turnout that turned out to be one that I
purchased from Branchline Models back when I was in high school. It had
been relaid a couple of times so it was time for it to go. I then had
to remove Homesote material to match the depth of the Tru-scale roadbed
that was about 5/16". I did that by cutting diagonally along the
roadbed and then using a paint scraper to gradually remove material
layers. After several hours each of two nights I reached the proper
depth evenly along the route, so now the new turnout would pretty much
drop into the proper place. Because I didn't like re-routing the siding
trackage, I put all the new length to the single track end. I
determined that there was just enough space and clearance around the
area under the layout.
I then drilled new holes for wires and the rod to activiate the throw
rod. Most of my twin coil machines are mounted via Rix Racks. To me
they have always been a bit difficult to install and adjust but seem to
be better than some other methods I've seen. Well, it turns out that I
was about 1/2" off in the amount of room I would need to mount this
assembly.
So I got creative and mounted the switch machine on the rack in a
backwards position thus saving that 1/2" I really needed.
Unfortunately, the internal flip-flop switch that controls the polarity
fell apart so I had to dismount and reassemble the components. I also
chose to replace some of the wiring to the motor and change the way the
assembly was mounted to the underside of the roadbed. So last night,
after many hours of work under the layout, stretching over the layout
and workbench time, we finally got things working perfectly. The coils
work correctly and tonite I plan on hooking up the track wires--so
fingers crossed as I open up my mainline again for traffic. I'm hoping
to not need any tweaking!
Then on to other projects!
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
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