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To accurately align the rails prior to soldering, use a pair of old style copper rail joiners upside down on the top of the rails. Once soldered slide them along the rail, lift up your section and remove them.
What a great detailed video. I'm using a small back bedroom 9'6" x 6"6'. Likewise my space is limited and therefore one lift up section near the door and a dropdown one behind is necessary. Most videos don't go into such simple detail as yours. Very helpful indeed.
You can get perfectly perpendicular cuts with a Dremel if you use a flex rotary shaft. I use this to cut all gaps in my rail work. I've even used a flex shaft to build a tiny miter saw for metal tubing.
Great video. I just have one tip that I learned form experience. I use double sided copperclad sleepering and had trouble with short circuits, which was eventually traced to the pins touching both strips of copper. I now gap both sides of the strips before installing.
Great Video! I have used PC board but for greater strength on the sectional layouts I've done, I prefer flat head brass screws. The process is similar. Pre-drill and install a brass screw under each rail on both sides of the gap, making sure the screw head is close to the bottom of the rail but doesn't hold the rail up at all. Than, solder the rails to the screws and finally cut the gap in the rail.
Top tip: Connect the track and point with fish plates to get a nice smooth connection perfectly in line, then pin the track in place, solder the fish plates to the PCB and then cut through the fish plates. The fish plates just aid in that nice smooth connection.
soldering fish plates in the centre to connect the rails also works for a semi-permanent joint. So you drop the insert in, then slide a piece of rail into the other fish plate to make the connection.
Just me mindful of when soldering track near the sleepers that you don't distort or partly melt your sleepers with the intense heat from the soldering iron. There are mini heat sink clamps you can purchase or if you want to, like I have done,made my own and saved a few precious dollars as railway modelling is one expensive hobby to have!! Cheers,C. Bernath, Sydney Australia.
Thanks for your very helpful video. I am building a small modular wall section layout alongside my living room walls and around one corner. Your Idea to use a piece of wood beam as a guard is very helpful, so I learned a new practise from you thank you so very much for it. Greetings from Lübeck in northern Germany, Ingo R.
@@Wallsrail sorry mate. Nobody liked a know - All lol. Just so happens I worked most of life in electronics. Some of which found themselves onto some locos you've driven ! Cheers Gary
Great video thanks, nothing to do with railway baseboards but I had to cut out some sections to repair me shed and used your baton idea and it worked a treat. Big thanks to you, you saved me a lot of hassle, trouble is now my missus thinks I can do woodwork 😕
So helpful - thank you for sharing. Like many others, I suspect, modern space (or lack of it!) demands using lifting sections and this video really helps.
Just because there's no comments that RU-vid is letting me see, the rest of the circuit board is a high temperature resin and fiberglass combo. Medium quality boards should be using something similar to FR-4. Great video!
I drove two small nails in the roadbed before I laid the track. Then I soldered the rails to the nailheads after I laid the track. Works great, and looks far better.
Use a saw blade with MORE teeth to end up with a smoother edge with less splinting of the wood. You should grind away the copper from the board side as well to prevent ANY possibility of a short through the nails. The shorting may not occur at first, but may develop over time with use. Using hobby files instead of the bigger coarser ones will assist in the delicate forming of the rails after cutting and, do not forget to file away any material left from cutting from the inside of the rails, where the flanges run, so there is less chance of a derail. After all is done, having pins installed in the bottom portion along with holes outlined with a imbedded washer will ensure proper lineup.
I've used this method many times however I had a short occur a few years later that took me some time to locate. The problem is with the nails being used to fasten down the copper clad tie. The nail can contact the surface cladding and also make contact with the underside cladding. If both nails do this, then a short occurs. The underside cladding should be cut before installing. This kind of short is nearly impossible to find because it occurs long after your rail has been operating successfully.
my old n gauge layout I had a long curve that ran over my lift up access board, I superglued the tracks that went over the joins and cut them with my Dremel its a process I will happily use agin on my 00 layout im planning,
Me too. My exhibition layout 'Kayreuth' (there are a number of videos of it on RU-vid - posted by others, not by me) was on the circuit for many years and, because I used screws, never once suffered from track lifting at board joins, unlike other people who used the copper strip and pin method. A screw won't pull out, unlike a pin. The layout had forty tracks (including the fiddle yard) which crossed board joints.
There is another option which can be used. Place the track on thin plywood, and have dowells under each end of the track. The dowels can be wired up to carry current; and set up so current is drawn from the hole in which the dowells go into. If you have to go over a lift up / out section, just remove the whole section of track, remove, replace and replace the track in the holes. My first effort was with wall plugs which snugly fitted into PVC piping. This was used with 19 * 42 mm timber, which was run over a set of scales. Using this method for 17 years and have not had a derailment on the scales as yet, and has not affected the accuracy of the scales.
We use a material called G10 in the USA it is a laminate of fiberglass layers green in color. The laminate is what makes multi layer PC Boards possible. Back in the day G10-FR was the material of choice the FR indicating Flame Resistance. Today the board of choice is FR4, which is just G10-FR. If you take a multi layer board and snap it in two, under a magnifying glass you can see the layers of copper between the layers of laminate. And P.S. A well-conceived, consise, and presented, video. Very rare in these days of self promotion and ego! A much appreciated THANK YOU!
Very much like how you’ve shown your method of adding the pcb ties. Although I agree these joints need to be avoided where we can, the way the alignment on your fold-up piece of the layout looks, that’s some excellent work you got done there.
Thanks for this, We have joints on both or layouts. i must admit we don't have issues when on straights but we currently have two joints on 3rd and 4th curves! they are an absolute mare! So many derailments if you don't get them 100% in line
Nice job I put a hinged bridge at the door of my shed layout and on a twin curved track it does work with care and pcb board . Regards Fred ps hinges on raised small piece of ply 😊
Being a member of a good railroad club during many years the lift sections were all in the landscape, never in tracks sections. In the early days of the club a bridge was removable. What happend? Of course one day a train was running there, and the bridge was not in its place..... Building my own very dense railroad heads up places were planned as well as the tracks. But of course, it can be made.
@@Wallsrail Thank you very much for replying to my comment. I would love if you could take a quick look at my page and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
A very interesting video, well made. I must be missing something though - I thought the main problem with lifting sections was connectivity at the joints? I see you've secured the ends of the rails to provide alignment, but I don't see any connectivity. Why bother using copper PCB if there is no electrical connection? I was waiting for the sprung 'pickup' that would electrically join the bits of PCB.
very nice .can you tell me what I will need to run marklin gauge1 trains in england central station 3 +60101 power box and what els do I need to get the power to the track? is there a special central station for gauge1? thanks barry
Looks to me that the PCB board ties are not as thick as the sleepers that are on the rail. Why not shim the PCB tie up so it will contact the rail??? You could use a lot less solder that way and it would look better.
An idea I’ve seen on UTube is to substitute Perspex for the subassembly of the lift-out section. The Perspex being more stable than , to extremes of temperature and humidity, seems an ideal solution. Anyone else used this method? T🚂
I am a rank armature in the model railroad hobby and have a need to build a modular layout requiring similar connections. But I am confused about the requirement to have the copper strips on either side of the joint as they don't appear to have any connection to each other. I'm sure I am missing something quite fundamental and simple here but I just don't understand. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You're not missing anything, I forgot to mention that electrical connectivity is via a wiring loom. Plug socket of various types can be used. The PCB is an easy way of securing the track to the base board. Hope that clears it up a bit Thanks NW
@@Wallsrail Thanks for that. But now I think I'm even more confused! If you don't mind me asking - what is the point of this lengthy process over just attaching the rail either side of the cut using the rail sleepers? Cheers
All very interesting but how do you maintain electrical continuity? I don`t know what they use for modern PCBs but back in the day it was something called Paxolin.
Paxolin is what I was told its called many moons ago!! Its now got a moderner name 😂 Electrical continuity is via wire leads and connectors. Plugs and sockets. there are various makes all do the same thing.
Our little group are having some difficulty with baseboard joints are are about to renew/repair them. In your video there appeared to be quite a gap between the strip and the rail, which you appeared to simply flood with solder. What sort of gap do you think is acceptable.
The rail "should" sit on top of the PCB strip, but anything up to 1.5 mm should be fillable with solder. Any more than that I'd be looking to put some more packing pieces in.
In the US you can get the pc board from Radio Shack. Since I don’t have a bandsaw I found instructions on RU-vid for scoring both sides of the pc board and snapping the board along the scores. Clamp the board right on the score line to snap it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uBkPX_QhRI0.html
I see, it's a wonderful method, but one question I have is that in a model using a DC motor, in a type in which currents with different polarities (+ & -) flow on the left and right rails, it's possible to have the current at the end of the track as shown in the video. soldering both will short the left and right rails. Is this model a catenary type, a battery type, or is it only for real steam engine locomotives? From Japan 🇯🇵🤔🍀
There are a multitude of methods to try. some of which I don't know about. Most of the time the method used is dependant on the situation. Like many other things there's no one answer to all to solve all problems
Why can't you just cut at the gap 1-1/2" from each edge then connect a 3" section of flex track at the joints. I see modular units connected this way at shows all the time vs. having to be exactly spot on every single connection? Again... many ways to do it... Yours is a very good video... Just thought I'd ask.😊
Might be a stupid question, buy why? Why is there any need to add boards like that at such joints? Electrically the sensible and easy thing would be to just run a set up wires between the two sections, so I can't see that being the reason. From a scenic perspective it just messes up the look of the track at the joint. So I just can't see any reason to do this.
Don’t rely on rail joiners for electrical connectivity especially on large layouts. This is crucial with Digital Command Control. Solder thin wire to the outside of each rail and thread it down through the baseboard. Connect it there to feeder wires connected to a power bus.
