How To Build A Switch 

Don’t give up, I’m 60 and have been dreaming of this since I was 10 years old!

Check out the "Way Out West Blow-in blog" Videos He gives a clear demonstration of his garden railway system. Worth watching it. All the best

Why dont people say points

Nathalie Wilson whats the point? Lol

Actually, the entire assembly is known as a "turnout". The "switch" or "points" refer to the movable part of the assembly. Although most people just call this a switch. Carl B.

Why don’t people say points?

@@user-qp2nk9qm8w ... sorry for the delay Jose. Can't really answer your question other than to say, most people don't know proper terminology for the various components that make up a turnout. When approaching a turnout, the "points" are used to change the traffic direction, or switch tracks. Hence, most people simply refer to the entire piece of trackwork as "a switch".

Switch Builder, if I may ask,,,where do you get steel rail, my google searches have not been sucessful,,,tks

Have been to Maricopa. That's a public operation that sees considerably more traffic than backyard railroads. Public clubs also have the fin'l resources to afford...steel rail (which can cost about the same as aluminum), but plastic ties are expensive. And completed steel rail on plastic ties turnout is also considerably heavier than aluminum rail on wood ties. But you're right...the prep work takes time. Doing as much prep work on the front end, makes the final assembly go faster and easier. And for an old-er mans hobby, the more work you can do on a table fixture is better than getting down on hands and knees on the ground. Thanks for your comment.

The assembly of the turnout is very mechanical in nature. The true art is designing the turnout based on the angle or radius of the diverging track.

@@carlbaskin270 Thank you for sharing

That's basically what I'm doing on my ranch. For a similar reason. (Not for feed specifically, but because the way my 20 acres is laid out, a 'walking' path is more practical and better for the natural vegetation and drainage to get from the house to the greenhouse (Which has to be further away because septic field), and to the rainwater catch-pond (ALSO far from the house because septic field). And also I don't feel like making 30 trips between the greenhouse and the catch-pond every week, or doing the damage that dragging a 500 gallon water trailer 3 times a week would do, when I can take the train out with 30 water tankers and do the same thing all in one 250' long consist on Saturday. (And then the rest of the week use other trackworks to just drive around and do 'yardwork' on the rest of the acreage)

@@NikkiTheOtter Yeah, septic fields are annoying to work around. I’m only on five acres, but we get, give or take, about thirty fifty-pound bags of feed every month and keep it in metal barrels. It’s definitely _easier_ to just use the truck, but a train would do less damage to the grass and again would be a lot more fun~ Do you have any advice or suggestions? I’m still new to the live steam hobby and still getting my bearings on what to go for and avoid.

@@Naro_Rivers Honestly, you've probably got as much experience in the train side of things as I do. All my experience is in radio controlled cars and planes. (Which means a train should be MIND-NUMBINGLY easy for me to build and operate, but real life sometimes sneaks in little differences.)

Thanks to you for sharing!

Thanx Mark.

I've been doing research with an eye toward building a 7.5" railroad in our yard in our retirement... The general consensus is that steel frogs and points are advisable. There's a few companies online that sell turnout point rails machined from 1" tall steel rail, and welded up frogs in a number of frog angles (one company does cast steel frogs too). They're more expensive than aluminum equivalents, but at least wearing them out is never a concern.

@@WHJeffB Some people do not like steel frogs as they can damage softer cast iron wheels. Those people use Aluminum frogs but then find that the harder cast iron wheels wear out the tips of the frog in fairly rapid succession. Railroads use a very hard frog with steel wheels for a reason, maintenance costs. Wheels are easy to change out or re-machine. Frogs are something that takes a lot of work to replace.

@@WHJeffB which companies?

Good observation. You bring up several point. Materials selected are based on cost and ease of machining. Have built turnouts using both 1x1x 1/8" hot rolled angle and stainless steel. Stainless takes a bit more time to machine. At the the tip of the point, the 1/8" angle is machined to 1/16 thick over an approx. 5" distance. Due to the angle of the switch point to the stock rail, the actual distance where a wheel is only on the edge of the angle is relatively short. Wear is not as bad as you think it is. There are people that will machine a point (usually steel) to a knife edge. Yes, I've seen those wear and break. Rate or wear will be dependent on the amount of rail traffic the point sees.

@@carlbaskin270 One of the things I tried way back was using steel for the points and then using a high Nickel content rod to build up just the tip. Points never wore but some people complained about their wheels being damaged by the impacts. Solved that by notching the rails slightly so the tip of the point lined up with the inside head of the rail.

Without getting too technical, flange ways are specified as 5/16" to 3/8" height and width. Always need to be careful to keep flange ways clear of ballast or other debris.

Different clubs and track owners use different materials. Usually dictated by budget. In the vid, the ties used were treated lumber rated for direct ground contact. Still, the ties should be supported by ballast to facilitate drainage.

Once the screws are down, there isn’t a big issue with them coming loose. The screws will become loose when the ties begin to age and deteriorate as the wood rots (you’re talking about 10+ years of service). At that point, you replace the tie and just put in new screws.

@@TheSteamChannel Many even in our climate in South Florida will last 30 or more years.

It's a pretty involved machining process to mill switch points (and frogs for that matter) and you need a pretty good sized mill to do it. Prototype switch points are planed, but not many 7.25"/7.5" gauge home shops will have a planer, much less one big enough to do this operation.

Why? Cost vs time. I've heard of some operations machining prototypic points...7 operations. And then, while the point knife edge looks impressive, those typically don't last long under heavy train traffic.

Not that I'm aware of.

Fi Fun You would have to use reinforced concrete using pretensioned steel wires with the raw concrete poured over them in a tie mould during the manufacturering process. Plain unreinforced concrete would crumble and break under the pounding of traffic passing over them.

I believe either Maticopa or the LALS group has made concrete ties.

jeffrey monroe Midwest Scale Rail

@@TheSteamChannel Thanks for that! Been trying to find a supplier for rail for a while.

I don’t recall his exact pricing on these turnouts. Another vender who offers switch kits is charging $800 per kit for a similar #7 switch with some modest quantity discounts. That’s just the kit with instructions to give you some perspective. It’s much cheaper to buy the materials and learn to build yourself.

No doubt, sharp cutting tools go a long way towards drilling holes easier...but sometimes a tool the cuts TOO WELL, end up producing blood on the job (please don't ask how I know!)

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Making those proposed holes in the frog would require more tightly gauging where the ties aligned as assembling the turn out. They may be able to jig that up, but may feel it isn't time effective in this application.

@@cdjhyoung Two more quick operations on the mill could be used to mill slots in the sides of the frog block (one in each side), which would make drilling for the final mounting screw holes a lot easier.

You might be surprised how much lateral movement there is from turnout to turnout. Even with a fixture, you can't build the turnout so tight that it won't come out of the fixture. Will add, by the time the turnout is "planted" in a railroad, things have already moved around quite a bit. Bottom line, some operations are best done during the time of assembly.

Know what you're talking about. Out of school, worked for a short bit for Amtrak. Was stationed up in the Northeast Corridor, where the turnouts were even LONGER. Don't recall the turnout number, but those were "high speed" turnouts so trains could be moved from track to track without slowing down too much.

When you’re building your turnouts, you can build them however you’d like.

The frog was intended to be "functional". A bar of aluminum was readily available. It does the job and when you roll over the frog at 5 to 7 mph...you don't notice the shape of the frog.

@@TheSteamChannel Bam!... there that is!

The footage was sped up-otherwise you’d be here for 1.5 to 2 hours 😉

Good one! Would be a dream in the large scale railroading hobby if we could build turnouts in 15 minutes!

The club has been building switches like this for 30 years and has never had a problem…

I bought some used aluminum rail from a man in Fl recently and they used stainless screws and bolts and you are correct. I am catching hell trying to remove the flat head, stainless steel fine thread screws from some pieces he used with aluminum flat ties on his driveway. I have soaked all of them with WD-40 multiple times with no luck & now it's just sitting until I decide to mess with it anymore? Same issue with the aluminum diamonds & aluminum pieces at & between the switches & guard rails. The screws/bolts are locked up like they had Loctite & JB Weld used when assembled!

@Vanguard Actual 1 I learned the hard way when repainting an ambulance. The box was aluminum and the screws holding trim were stainless steel, we had to drill almost everyone of them