Last Point on the Wye

So Saturday brought relief from going to work. So instead it was off to the train club and work on the HO layout. With all the usual talking, coffee and such, I got the point in - just in time for the lunch time running to start. It might have taken me 4 hours, but it works and I didn't forget to drill the hole under the point this time for the point motor!

So here we see the point in full context.

The track for the wye is not yet connected to the point as I have yet to cut and add in the plywood base for the cork and track to sit on. But at least the mainline still works and there were no derailments caused by my work.

I was able to move the new point about 40 mm to the left of the point on the right so as to make a better entrance/exit to the skyboard, as well as a better curvature. To save putting in an extra pair of feeder wires just to this short section, I soldered the short piece to the new points. You can still easily remove the point as the metal rail joiners on the right hand end of the small piece are still movable.

To put the point in I had to lift the track back to the nearest joiners to the left of the point area. So that meant lifting about a 500 mm piece. Once cut to size it was re-glued down with Liquid Nails and some drawing pins and they were able to be removed by noon for the running of the trains. Of course I had to solder the feeders back into place.

So below you can see the Liquid Nails on the right holding down the replaced 500 mm section. The track on the left had moved a bit over the last 60 or so mm, so a few drops of white glue was added between the sleepers and 2 track pins put in to temporarily hold it in place to allow for a nice join on the curve between the 2 sections of track.

On Wednesday I will trim up some sleepers and add them to all the gaps I have made. And sometime soon I can then repaint the track/sleepers so all the disturbances and new track can be hidden behind a nice weathered track colour.

Oh and of course a pair of new feeders were soldered to the points outer rails about half way along and then joined up to the feeder bus under the layout.

After a few trains went over with no problems at all, I was happy with the work and the outcome of it. Here are three loads on Bruce H's biiiiig BNSF freight train.