He's going to get those caught on something.
Ages ago I made an attempt at starting Store St. with the purchase of a bunch of etched girder rail from Proto87stores.com. It was a new product he was making for HO scale street cars and he felt I could adapt it to N scale. I began to experiment with it on styrene.
Ultimately this was a failure and I shelved the idea.
Now that I'm back at it, over the last few weeks I've been experimenting with the girder rail again. I went back to the website, and he had a few more products which would have done exactly what I needed, including a variety of radii. Unfortunately, he's got a note on the site indicating he's closed up shop for now and he isn't replying to emails. So, I'm working with what I have.
I have straight rail...
The curved rail i have is 8" radius, and has inside and outside rails.
I also have some street turnouts,
which came with a few of thier own frogs...
....and he sent me some prototype etched HO scale frogs which I thought I could adapt for street use.
The turnout frogs were way too tight so I can't use those. I planned to use the one big etched frog. I also needed to increase the radius of the curved rail.
I used a vice to gently bend it in a bunch of places along it's length until I had the radius I needed, which was 11" on the inside rail, and slightly more on the outside.
I drew a template to compare inside and outside rails to as I went.
I also needed a better sub road bed than styrene. Believe it or not I was able to solder on it, but it wasn't pretty and I was going to need soooo many feeders. I had the idea to use circuit boards. They have pads I can solder to, holes for feeders, and with all of the separate pads, I can easily isolate the rails that need it. Amazon provided!!
Here are a few of them boomed together with little wires soldered at the joints.
I decided to start with the most complicated piece of track work, which is the cross over near swift that has two opposing spurs that cross on a curve. If I can get this to work, everything will work.
I started by laying out the turnout locations and marking rails with dry erase markers.
Then I cut holes to allow for control wires underneath later on.
Then I soldered the turnouts and straight track in place. I use a MT wheelset to set the gauge (this will cause an issue later)
Next I marked and cut in where a curved rail would cross the straight. Since I'll have to cut the frogs in, I wanted to have the curved rail intact, and cut the straight path
This proved a bit messy and with later frogs I laid the curved rail first and then filed the straight route to fit.
Once the rail was all in I cut the frog. I used a 1/32" cut off disc against a metal ruler as a guide, and very gently, and with multiple passes, cut the straight route, testing frequently until a wheelset rolled through in both route without bumping. (The wheels ride on their flanges)
Surprisingly, it worked even though is was a little ugly.
I moved onto the other route. For this one I was using the etched frog, but it went together in the same order.
Here you can see the frog was not quite the right angle so I had to make a bend in the track at the frog. This worked with freight cars but will be a problem for locos later.
Next came the drossing. Hey if I can make one messy frog... why not make four! For this one i again laid the curved route first, and then filed the straight route to fit as I laid it, vs cutting it out. It was much cleaner.
Cutting the flangeways was much cleaner this time.
Freight cars rolled through in all directions, so I moved onto cutting gaps. For this I used a jewelers saw which i had to insert the blade into the holes and then assemble the saw. I broke a few blades but got it done.
I soldered a bunch of feeders on and tested in all directions. Surprisingly, I successful ran a Life-Like SW900 and a box car through all routes, except the prefab frog that I made the wonky curve in. The freight car passed but the loco derailed every time. So it had to go.
I removed the straight and curved rails the intersected with that frog and got to work laying new ones as I had for the other frogs, diverging route first.
The flangeway I cut was the best one yet,
and the rails are perfectly aligned.
Testing time!
The LL SW mostly did just fine, but had a bit of difficulty the odd time. It turns out, which I knew but forgot when I started this adventure, that the loco wheels have wider flanges than MT freight cars which have a knife edge flange. Because I used the MT truck to set my gauge, it left a LITTLE room for there to be variance, I think. The wider flange of the LL loco doesn't sit right down in the flangeway and so the slightest variance of gauge, or worse, points, and it climbs out. I've also checked the wheel gauge on the LL and I think it's a hair narrow. With this rail, even the slightest bit of variance and it won't work.
I wanted to test with some other locos as well. I have Bachmann 44T and 70T that
@CNR5529 sent me. They are DCC so I connect the tracks to DCC and had a go. Both locos track fine. I rant them through in both directions twice and they didn't derail. So I think I've proven that it can work. I'll just need to be sure that any loco that will run in here, which will just be these small switchers, is tweaked perfectly to work on these tracks.
