Hand laying track

Hi 

I am planing on hand laying some track and was wondering how and when in the process others have stained (weathered) the sleepers.
1- Did you stain the timbers before laying the track of after?
2- What did you stain the sleepers with?

 Regards
Matt 

There are many ways to go about it, but here's a few blog entries of the way I went about it.

http://gunnedahandbeyond.blogspot.com.a ... s-and.html

http://gunnedahandbeyond.blogspot.com.a ... elics.html

http://gunnedahandbeyond.blogspot.com.a ... llast.html

http://gunnedahandbeyond.blogspot.com.a ... track.html

I used coffee to stain N Scale ties and used the coffee grindings to make ballast. Mind you, that was yonks ago, before all the good stuff was available. But it was cheap as the only cost was the cork road bed, the rail and track spikes.

What method of hand laying track are you using:

.  timber sleepers with rail spiked;

.  timber sleepers with rail glued;

.  PCB sleepers with rail soldered and timber sleepers filling the gaps;

.  other?

Mark

I will be using timber sleepers with the rail spiked. I have purchased tie plates and scale spikes form the Proto:87 store to  make the most realistic track I can.

Matt 

Matt,

I too, used Proto:87 components to lay my own track. I stained my sleepers before laying and used diluted tyre black to give them a nice grey tone.

Cheers,

Rob

Matt,

are you using P87 standards for the turnouts?  What gauge (16.5 or 18.375) are you using?

What era are you modelling?  I am tempted by P87 but getting spoked wheels is a problem and steam locos are a problem.

Have you looked at how other Australian P87 users are building track?  There is a relevant Yahoo group.

Mark

Mark,

You should be following this: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index. ... ge__st__25

The track I am about to lay will be for a small diorama which will have both SG & BG track. This will be a practice for the dual gauge lay out based on the Port Adelaide area I am planning.

I am not sure yet wether I will use P87 standards or just use RP88 wheels. This diorama will hopefully help me decide which path to go down. As my modelling era is c1990 I don't have to worry about the lack oh spoked wheels for P87.

Matt

I am talking to a NSWGR modeller about collaborating in building a dual gauge station, to avoid re-building his models I am thinking of RP25-88 wheels set to EM standards as some others are using.  I’ll be going the code 55 on PCB sleepers route for track construction.  Diesels on the broad gauge initially but spoked wheels are easy for this standard.

With 16.5mm back to back on the BG and 16.5mm gauge on the SG the width of the rail head becomes a real issue.  I should really build some test track so will be interested in your progress.

I know some consider this sort of talk as heresy or something to fight but we should really try to catch up with the poms, they introduced EM in 1948 and 18.83 in 1967 (or something vaguely like that) to get more accurately gauged track.

Mark

Oh, I don't think there is any 'catching up with the poms' to do, we can do just as well on our own. They might have created EM and P4 but that was only because they made such a f*ck up of it in the first place with OO scale.

Actually you might need spoked wheels even in that era as AN had OB and some other wagons still on arch bar bogies with spoked wheels, M vans were another type of wagon with arch bar bogies and possibly spoked wheels. These were mainly on BG though and were not used on high speed services or out of AN territory, 

Some OB's were stored at Port Dock Station in that era out the back were the current Aviation Museum is now on the old coal stacking tracks that were still there. This was 2 years after the PDSRM (NRM) opened. We used to get AN shunts alongside the museum to move wagons into and out of these sidings. Always interesting to watch though.

The AMRA fine tolerance wheel and track standard covers H0 and EM dimensions that are needed to build your proposed dual gauge track. If you use the recommended H0 track gauge for crossing V's and you will get a nominal 2mm difference in track gauge. This means you can have a rail head as wide as 1mm for complex track work which is wider than typical rail you would want to use. The AMRA standard works for PR 25-88 wheel profiles correctly gauged.



Terry Flynn.

Thanks Terry, I have grabbed a copy and will start ordering wheels to suit.

Mark