Plese can someone tell me 1) What is the best tool for cutting out the rectangles in baseboards to sink point motors into? and 2) Please can someone suggest a suitable tool to hammer track pins in through the holes of N gauge track.
Graham Kendall said the following on 30/08/2007 11:08:
I suppose if you had a jigsaw, you wouldn't be asking the question! Drill a hole in the corners, and use a hacksaw blade (or keyhole saw) to join the holes. Then smooth off.
Sorry - I can't resist saying "hammer" :-) What you actually need though is a pin hammer, which has a smaller head.
Graham Kendall wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
Drill a couple of holes and join them up with a jigsaw, if no jigsaw use a keyhole saw.
A hammer!
I have a smallish one with a rectangular pein that fits between the rails on my 009 track, cheap and nasty Chinese made affair bloody useless for anything else. I tend to use my dremmel (or if I'm not being lazy a pin chuck) to drill a starter hole.
I have moved over to glueing the track down though.
Hammers and model track is a recipe for disaster! Pins through sleepers distorts the sleeper and messes up the gauge. I use pins _beside_ the sleepers to hold the track in place while the ballasting glue is setting and then remove them. BTW I use MDF as the top of the baseboard frame and then add soft board (UK Sundella?)on top for sound deadening, ease of pinning and ease of cutting trackside drains and the like.
My track (Peco Streamline, N-gauge) is all pinned down. Gem steel pins bought in about 1965, veterans of a couple of TT layouts and early variations of the current layout. I drill slightly over-size holes in the plastic sleepers, and use either a pin-push or a pin hammer to fasten the track down to the chipboard baseboard with a layer of thin cork between track and baseboard. On the plywood trackbase sections, I tried double-sided tape, and then tried glue, but the sound levels were too high so I ended up using the pins with the ply as well as the chipboard. The pins are not pushed all the way in, there's always a slight gap between the pin-head and the sleeper. Sound levels are bearable, and the track hasn't needed adjusting very much over the many years that it's been down - other than the times when major changes were being made (the fiddle-yard has had several changes in the last few years, currently 10 roads and a facility to add rolling stock from "cassette" storage).
If your baseboards allow it, consider cutting a small hole for the operating pin only, and mount the motors themselves on the other side.
If you are cutting point motor holes before track laying then I would use a router or Rotozip as I have access to those. Also consider a hole saw, but you end up with a circular hole. Disguise it with card or styrene with a small hole for the operating pin. You can make as much mess as you want without risk to existing track or scenery.
If some track or scenery is already laid then the hole saw would be my choice (you don't need any flat area to run the router or rotozip on) with an assistant on the hoover, or PVA the surrounding area and use the sawdust generated as instant scenic scatter material :-).
Drill pilot holes in the sleepers large enought to allow the pin to pass through easily but not sloppy. Use a *small* hammer to tap the pins in gently without hitting the track or a proper pin push.
My favourite method is to use a layer of laminate floor underlay (a bit like sundeala) on top of the baseboard. This takes most of the length of a Peco track pin easily. The remaining length of pin is easily pushed into the mdf or ply below but is sufficient to give a firm hold.
Why not mount the point motors under the baseboard and make small hole for the pin to go through. You could use Peco extented pin (or add an extension yourself to the originals), SEEP or tortoise.
Many thanks for your replies, I have found a tool ideal for making pilot holes in track in the Model Rail Magazine supplied "Modellers Tool Kit" And some of dad's old seep motors from Gaugemaster, so that's those 2 issues sorted! NEXT!
I am looking at recreating a plan I'd seen in the Peco Setrack N Gauge plan book in streamline track and track width, with the Code 55 rail, but have found that where the Setrack plan has a RH point connected crossing to traverse an inner rail and go on to put a yard inside the two line loop, that I can't do that with streamline becuase of the degrees angle of the streamline point to the setrack ones. Pleae can someone enlighten me on how this could be achieved?
If you're following a setrack plan, but with streamline, then you'll need to increase track lengths accordingly to allow crossovers, etc, to fit, and also you'll have to adjust for the distance between the track, as I believe in setrack the distance between tracks is somewhat larger than in streamline (based on the turnout angles), as streamline is closer to scale for that measurement.
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