Building track and points.

[cabbage]

The problem with Stainless is the fact that it contains Chromium... Chromium is a transition metal and exhibits a number of oxidation states CrII CrIII and CrVII. Soft soldering it is thus very hard. Silver soldering at high temperatures (sufficient to reduce any oxide to metal) is your best bet. Titanium has EIGHT oxidation states plus the fact that it is: amphoteric, and forms dative or co-valent bonds. This is the reason why Titanium is normally referred to as "The Nymphomaniac Metal" in Chem labs... It was not until the early 1920's that Titanium Metal was commercially available.

I did investigate the Cliff Barker rail when I first started and it is of very high quality -but brass is so much easier to work with...

The CuP Alloys website does have some information on soldering Stainless.

http://www.cupalloys.co.uk/brazing-stainless-steel-c44.html

regards

ralph

[bolingbroke]

Thank you Ian, Andy and Ralph for providing so much information. Preheating a block and a much larger iron will be my next steps as well as taking up the other hints you have given me.

I am only using stainless steel for the branch line, to use up stock, the bulk of my rail is brass. Living by the sea, I had heard many horror stories about soft soldered brass joint failures. Prior to joining the forum, the manufacturers Johnson Mathey told me that silver soldering  brass for use in salt-laden atmospheres was approved for military use. So I had a go - for the first time in nearly half a century! Successfully - at least on two vees. Stupidly, I had not considered this for stainless rail. I will have a go on some short bits of rail.

I still want to master the soft soldering of biggish jobs. The gentleman who built Mike May's track apparently silver soldered the vees and then soft soldered the vees and the closure and wing rails to a brass plate to increase the rigidity of the crossing. The advice you have given me would be even more pertinent for this task. That is some way off - I will just try and master soft soldering vees to start with.

Wish I had joined the forum 12 months ago.
Thanks again.

Roger.

[John Candy]

Andy,

Re : Video clips
My webserver has plenty of disc space and at the moment my bandwidth is running at average of 6% load average over a month (bear in mind that my server is already home to in excess of 20 websites and some of those already carry video).
Provided the clips are no more than 5 minutes each (and there are not too many of them) I don't anticipate a problem.........unless every G3 member tries to access them simultaneously!!
They will need to be recorded in a common format such as AVI or MPEG.

Regards,
John.

[IanT]

Hi Roger,

I will be making up some brass V's shortly - and I may well silver solder them this time around.

This has the advantage that you can subsequently soft solder other parts of the turnout together (without the V coming unstuck) either on a brass plate (as I have done before) or with some thin (1-2mm) brass rods spaced to go between the sleepers. John W had a sample of this build method at Alton in December and it looked a neat way to do things. Once painted the rods 'disappear' between the sleepers (and are therefore not as unsightly as a plate) but will still keep things in the correct position.

John had used the jig available from Ken C to 'set' his parts, so if anyone wants a headstart with getting wing rails and V's etc correctly spaced and positioned for 'tacking' them together with rod (or plates) before laying them - then the jig will help. Dave 'The Shop' can advise.

Regards,

Ian T

[cabbage]

When I was building the "snowflake wheel" for the NER EE-1 I had to hold together the trident leg whilst I hit it with the torch etc. The method used was to smear CA to the faces of the trident and then sick a spatula (large size lollipop stick) to it. This then held the pieces in position whilst I clamped it firmly in a small vice. The spatula duly burned off and the solder flowed around the joint. If you MUST solder in the expensive jig -then make sure that you have heavily rubbed a 2B pencil over the jig. This will stop the solder from sticking to it. OK -it will use a lot of pencils -but at the end of it you will still have the expensive jig intact....













regards

ralph

[bolingbroke]

Hi Ian,
Try again. My first post disappeared into the ether. The use of rods looks good. Some of my second hand points have the whole crossing assembly soldered to a brass plate. These are very strong, hence my desire to master the art. I can report success! I borrowed an old iron -seemingly ex-Antiques Roadshow: used a pre-heat block and made use of the other hints. Result - two st.st. vees soldered first time. One swallow etc.etc. Thanks to all who offered help.

About a week ago you suggested I post photos of my simple jigs which use 2 1/2" aluminium flat bar. A workshop move has hampered this but I have posted (with luck) one shot. The jig nearest the camera is for a 1 in 6 diamond crossing. It took about an hour and a quarter to make. Behind it is the sleeper assembly. Both items sit on Trax templates. In between is a straight forward track gauge made from an offcut - about 10 mins work.

I also have another jig - not on the photo. When I lifted second hand track, some rail lengths lost their battens. The jig has three parallel bars with the gaps the width of the rail head. The track is inverted which allows new battens to be tapped down on to the existing track pins whilst alignment is guaranteed. I also use these 'rogue' lengths to start transition curves. The first 12" is clamped straight and the curve is the held/set by temporary wooden guides. Harder to explain than to do.

The kindling at the far end is part of a batch of 500 super-elevation wedges. I wanted nearly a 1000 wedges. Helped by a neighbour, we lost the will to live after two tedious hours and settled for half the required number.

Behind the sleeper assembly, though not relevant, is my simple rolling road. It took only an hour to build using proprietary rollers. It works well and will currently take any British prototype six coupled loco.

Hope this gets through this time .
Regards,
Roger.

[IanT]

Looks like your 'Novice' days are pretty much over then Roger. 

Some interesting ideas here. Thank you for posting them.

Just out of curiosity - what are you making the sleepers from? They look like a hardwood - I don't suppose you have found a good (e.g. affordable) source of wood for this.

Regards,

Ian

[bolingbroke]

Hi Ian,
Thanks but I  am not sure my 'L' plates are off just yet. My knowledge of wood is not great. As most of my track was purchased second hand, I am not using a lot of sleepers. My local carpenter suggested I stick to sawn-treated timber. Experienced folk may scream and say - stick to hardwoods.

I was influenced by the choice of preservative. I contacted Bird Brand ( www.birdbrand.co.uk   RK and K Jones) after  noticing their website said that Creosote substitutes (creocote etc.) can no longer claim to be a wood preservative - no longer suitable for ground contact. A wonderfully helpful man called Richard at Jones said that the only thing that works is traditional creosote. Now I know my sleepers are not in contact with the ground but it would be nice to have this degree of functionality.

As a registered smallholder, I am classed as a professional user and allowed therefore to purchase creosote. I was bothered about its carcinogenic properties but was advised that some of the substitutes are also now carrying carcinogen warnings. Creosote is carcinogenic primarily via prolonged skin contact.

Given that I can use a high performance preservative, I concluded that treated timber would suffice. Not a lot of help to you I know.

If I could be indulgent and explain that I go to great lengths to constrain the use of creosote to the sleepers. I have a dip tank directly above which is a primary drainage tray which captures all drips. I managed to buy very clean 45 gallon oil drums for £6 each from a local recycler. These act as secondary drainage tanks to increase throughput ( I have 1300 feet of track to re-treat). When dry, the track is transfered to an open-sided shelter for final drying. This shelter has a bunded  floor in case there is any final seepage. True, this does not obviate the entire environmental impact but it is seriously minimised. In any case, other solvent-based preservatives are also not without effect.

For all other above-ground timber I am now experimenting with Ecosote ( about £35 for 20 litres) which is water-based and has no health warnings. The one exception to this is the top of baseboards which I coat in a 1:3 mix of PVA in case of failure of the roofing felt. A lot of my baseboards so treated have been exposed all winter and they still repel water.

Sorry to digress and still be of little help. My local carpenter uses a lot of hardwoods -some reclaimed. If you let me know your preferences it will cost nothing to explore his sources.
Regards,
Roger.

[bolingbroke]

Hi Ralph,
It was remiss of me in my previous posts not to acknowledge your work on the snowflake wheel and tips about sacrificial fixings and the 2B pencil. I would not have thought of this approach and can see it being of use to me in the future.
Thanks,
Roger.