copper clad paxolin

Chris,

If you're thinking of making track, then don't look at buying sheets of the material. The most common modern material used in copper clad circuit board is a type of fibre glass which is sudden death to most types of cutting tool. So cutting out sleepers can be a hard job in the home workshop. You can get SRBP board as well but it tends to be a bit thick for sleepering in the smaller scales and ain't that easy to cut either.

There are several suppliers of ready cut sleepers and here's a sample of one supplying 4mm scale products.

You can also get them in 2mm, 3mm and 7mm scales if you look around.

If you are looking for sheet there are many suppliers such as

and search for PCB or Printed Circuit Board. For model railway track work it is advisable to get single sided material. Double sided material can cause some interesting short circuits when you use metal pins through the sleepers.

Jim.

Cheers Jim,

...

No I don't have the patience for all that ... if I do move to "hand built" track I've no doubt that I'll go for C&L.

What it is I'd been having one of my periodical slack jawed mooches around the "Dyserth Road" website and I saw the article for fitting additional pick-ups on the Backman 08. Well to cut a long story short I've got a feeling that the technique can be adapted to a wide variety of stock - cheap and chearful as it is. A lot of my stock is old, second hand and to be frank a little past its best, certainly additional pick-ups would help a lot of the stuff and this method has some distinct advantages over teh techniques I've been using so far.

I should really join a club, whenever I start on something I tend to spend half my time trying to reinvent the wheel.

Doh! ... is that all it is, PCB board?

Chris,

If you're just looking for smallish bits on which to mount pickups, look at getting some 7mm scale point timbering strips which are 7mm wide and about a foot long. They are probably around the width you are wanting and it's quite easy to hack them to the lengths you want. (A big pair of side cutters does the job very well :-) ) That might be easier than having to buy a biggish sheet of the stuff from electronic suppliers and cutting small bits from it.

Jim.

Nice tip, thanks.

Chris