fast track turn outs recomendations

helo

i have a question for anyone using fast track turn outs . i am tinkering with a layout idea with cad rail and i will be using fast tracks. i wanted to know which ones people prefer, which numbered turn outs and where. i still need a bit to learn cad but i am getting ahang of its a little. i tried to eyeball my mtl turn out i had and i can seem to get it to work, i will wait till i have some fast track or i guess i will scan the turn outs they give you.i just use marklen for now to get some ideas flowing

but any how , is there any turn out i should get?

im planning on a 45in X 80 inch layout, switching be what i like. would #4 be good all around or a mix?4 in yards and say 7s on the main? are 4 too tight for longer 50Ft box cars ? or 60ft or an sd40 possibly?

Steve,
I'm not a fast tracks guy, but yours really isn't a fast track question.
The sectional Z turnout (13-degree) is roughly a #4 turnout and just about everything less than 90ft runs through them.
I like your selection of turnout sizes but wonder how the #7s will work in the space you have: you'd need 16" of run out for a parallel siding.
I'd be interested in your experiences building the fast track turnouts when you get to that point.

Mark

Hello;

I have Nr 10's plus dual gauge Nr 6 turnouts jigs both left and right from fast tracks. I also have a good deal of experience with Rokuhan and Micro trains Roadbed track. If you are building a switching layout, you need something that is dependable and runs well. So unless you have a great deal of experience with hand laid track and soldering and electrical wiring I would suggest that Fast tracks is not the way to go for a switching layout unless it is also to be a display layout with lots of detail and not much running.

On the operational side road bed track gets the switching layout up and running quickly. For my own preference I do not like the smaller turnout numbers like 4's. or 55mm (I prefer the nr 6 or 110mm turnout, and there is some debates on what Nr the standard Marklin turnout is) even though all MTL engines run through the55 MM turnout fine and all the cars with talgo trucks (talgo are trucks with couplers attached) and this includes MTL passenger cars. 40 ft cars with body mounted couplers ore okay but 50 ft cars with body mounted couplers are okay behind a Geep but not any of 6 wheel engines with pilot mounted couplers.On the Geeps talgo or pilot mounted are okay.

For switching I find metal wheels better than MTL plastic but if you try and push a long train of cars with Talgo trucks, you will find that at a certain load point they start to jack knife, and derail, but the cars with body mounted couplers seem to stay on the rails while yard switching because the side load on the coupler is alleviated by the car body length, which is much longer than the wheel base of a talgo truck, with long or short stings of cars the body mount is superior in switching using Nr 6 turnout which is standard for MTL Rokuhan roadbed track and Marklin sectional track. If you want to use smaller turnouts I would suggest trying a few of Rokuhan 55 mm turnouts and try backing cars through them, before buying the Fast Track jig as a pair of jigs is a heavy investment for a small layout in my opinion. My Nn3 layout was 32 x 12 and I used quite a 18 of of the Nr 6's but only 4 of the Nr 10's
trucks.
don't get me wrong I like the Fast track jigs they make it very easy to build a good working turnout, but the electrical side of wiring them is a challenge with a switch machine such as a tortoise or the Hoffmann I prefer to use. Then there is the ballasting but before long you find it takes a lot of time and effort to get them working and the result is great but I would not put that effort into something I took to a show to operate as a switching puzzle.

any way that is my take on the subject.



My hand laying experience was all in Nn3, while scale in N scale the track is still 6.5mm between the rails and I used number 6 turnouts for yard and depot sidings and I used number 10 for main line turnouts and really like their performance, however in small spaces Nr 10's are not rally practical as they do take up room.

regards Garth

Thanks for the replies

Let me answer some questions . At first i was not for using the fast tracks, but after watching the video i was not scared anymore. I was a mechanic for some 10 years now that dont mean i will be great at modeling a railroad, but soldering i have done pleanty with hotrods and at work. Working with my hands is not something new so being that ,im ok for what ever challange the turn outs will be i think i would get good at them with time. Yes its an investment for a small layout but i plan to expand in the future , few years apx. I was just not sure how they compared to a regular mtl turn out but u guys have answered that. I guess i should think about the # 5 or 6 in the yard. Though not manditory i was just guessing 7 out of the yard . But i will wait and scan there turnout and input them into cadrail. I have seen how its done just havent done it , i know that its possible and ill redraw and adjust to my likeing. I would like a sd40 to have acess into the yard so i will stray away from #4 for that reason. Why limit any 6 axle to not go into the yard with a possibility of conflict of a box car i may have or buy in the future. I seem to have found limits of 190 or 170mm radius for 6 axles so i am keeping that in mind.

Also what was your experience on how many boxcars it took untill the jacked knived ? Alot or a small amount?

What problems might i run into installing a tortoise ? I seen the manual ones that he offer on the web site any input for them?

Steve

Hi Steve;

Soldering rail is not like what you do in body work no acid involved but flux should be rosin or purposed for electronics, can be liquid or paste or it can rosin core found in solder for electronic circuits. Higher silver content makes stronger joints but requires more heat. Excess heat for too long will de-laminate copper foil on PC ties and tie bars or turnout throw bars. Using standard 60/40 rosin core fine solder for surface mounted components on circuit boards, I use a 15/30 watt iron on 15 watt setting, and I use a fine chisel point tip and I tend to silver plate the my copper tips before use as it prolongs the service life of tip and makes it easier to clean and keep clean with a wet sponge.You can make iron tips work but you get better heat transfer with copper.

Using the fast track turnout jigs, as big aluminium plate they are milled from is a big heat sink, so I use 30 watt setting for frog and guard rails and 15 watt setting for most other track work. My turnout points I use a piece of fine piano wire as a hinge pin placed through base flange of rail and I silver solder it in place and then place trough the tie bar and bend it over in a slot in bottom of tie bar, and then the other end of my point rails are fixed solid at frog so point end is under torque load and wants to return to closed position. So using solder joint to hold point rail to tie bar will eventually fail due to stress of movement without the pin. For gaping the rail I use fine or thin cut off discs ( yes they break more easily so you have to have a gentle touch, and cut at diagonal to running rail. For testing turnouts I use a single truck with no coupler and it has to pass through in both directions with just a puff of air from a straw with no bouncing.

Turnout motors are connected to tie bar and there are several methods, my preferred method is fine piece of piano wire. about half an inch from throw bar towards frog I place a piece of copper tubing slightly larger than the wire, I bend a right angle in the wire and drop in down through the hole, the top end is placed over the throw bar and cut off just beyond the throw bar and a the end is bent 90 degrees to drop into hole in center of throw bar. Under the table, I bend the wire up to the table to form a right angle and the arm points away from the points back toward the frog. being a mechanic and having done choke and throttle cables hooking up a switch machine is not greatly different. The switch machine has to move that arm under the table back and forth at right angles tothe throw bar and you want your switch machine to connect to the bar with enough of an arm to provide some torque, in the piano wire to keep points in selected position but but to also allow an engine or car to force the points open when approaching a closed set of points from frog side of turnout. switch machines are mounted below the table and depending on how their arm operates you have several options as to how you connect it to the throw arm below the table. I use a Hoffmann which has a push pull movement so I connect it at 90 degrees to throw under the table. This turnout also has auxiliary contacts which I use to route power from the point contact rails to the frog based on point position, open or closed. in a few cases I have even wired up an LED to to show Red closed and green open so I do not run into closed turnout as it causes a short momentarily. beyond the frog I cut a isolation gap about 2 inches from the frog and what this usually does is if I am running into closed turnout and not high-balling it I get stopped before I short things out at the points as it cuts power to loco on head and is usually enough to prevent a double header to push an engine into closed points, remember if you are pushing a string through the turnout with metal wheel sets, there is no protection other than seeing your turnout position or your indicator LEDs if you have them. If you are regularly using 3 and 4 units on head end on main track you can make the safety zone long enough that so that by the time the third unit crossed the gap the lead 3 have lost power, remember one engine can bridge the isolation gap so your head end power has to all be across the gap and be between the points and the gap,to stop the train. There are other ways to control the throw bar, some more direct, but this it the one that I have found works best for me and is easiest to set up, adjust and requires least maintenance over time.

as to talgo trucks jack knifing, there are too many variables to give a specific number to this. the heavier the load being pushed, the steeper the grade the more the talgo truck start to rotate as the coupler forms an arm at 90 degree to the axle, so when pushing hey tend to weather vane or coke to limit of wheel flanges and at some point the pressure becomes enough to lift flange up over rail and you are derailed. On a body mounted coupler the whole car length is the lever arm and instead of 2 flanges holding against the force you have four, and two of them are a long way down the arm and on a much longer lever arm so it becomes much harder to lift a wheel over the rail head. The truck is free to rotate under the car, at either end so even if it hits a frog or point rail, it is free to realign itself to pass the obstruction, which would derail a talgo truck instantly.

as for curve radius I have found 145 mm will run almost anything well but cars longer than 50 feet start to hang out to the inside, particularly auto racks, then containers and passenger. I prefer 275mm for main lines as a minimum but 220 mm works fine and, I have not found anything that won't run on 170mm.

With 25mm spacing between parallel tracks I have not found any clearance problems with track where inside track curve Radius is at minimum 170mm, does it look good in my onion, no but that is my eye, not yours.

regards Garth

Garth, a question about rail gaping......why the diagonal cut for gaping the rails? That wouldn't look as good as straight across the rail would it?

It's a smoother transition for the wheels. Much easier for them to roll over.

The diagonal cut with a fine disc is almost invisible or at least less visible and there is nothing for wheels to drop into so smooth movement across the diagonal cut gap. It also reduces the edge for a wheel flange to catch on especially on a heavy string of cars being pushed past it with talgo trucks.I use it on hand laid track as the rail does not move on the tie base and you end up with track that is like continuous welded rail no clickety clack. I would not use it on flex unless I was putting epoxy or a piece of plastic into the gap as with temperature swings the rail can creep and the expansion gap could close, if not held apart.

regards Garth

tealplanes wrote: Garth, a question about rail gaping......why the diagonal cut for gaping the rails? That wouldn't look as good as straight across the rail would it?

Well, I learned something. Your answers make perfect sense, Thom and Garth.

I haven't put anything in the few gaps I have on sidings since I use CA to hold my ties down every couple of inches and then the white/glue for ballast really locks things in.

I admit I've not put any gaps in my mainline rails at all and therefore am subject to expansion and contraction issues, but in all honesty, I've never had any derails due to track movement even though I store my modules outside in a trailer and leave them there both winter and summer between shows. I know I am breaking the rules of sense and sensibility, but thus far I've gotten away with it. Maybe someday I'll open the trailer door to find my rail pointing straight up suppose? :o)

I will employ that rail cutting technique in any future rail laying.
Thank you much.