{"id":2016,"date":"2008-12-06T23:28:28","date_gmt":"2008-12-07T04:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2009-01-11T20:10:45","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T01:10:45","slug":"switch-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/?p=2016","title":{"rendered":"Switch Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pivot Points<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Once again we are getting some wonderful December weather, so its another good evening for some trackwork.\u00a0 (I’m note sure what the little green eyes are watching.)<\/p>\n

After another battle with the upper portion of the house, I am a little tired, so I only worked for a bit on the layout this evening.<\/p>\n

I need to get a reliable method worked out for the numerous switch points on the layout.\u00a0 Most of the points are very short, about an inch or so, so traditional methods won’t work.<\/p>\n

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The points were initially soldered in place onto\u00a0 a temporary throwbar,\u00a0 Now, I need to cut them off and pivot them with a hinge.\u00a0 Its the only way to make short points work.<\/p>\n

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Cutting the points free is easily accomplished with a jewelers saw<\/a>.\u00a0 The blade can be taken off one end of the saw and fed between the ties and re-attached.\u00a0 The points are sliced free.<\/p>\n

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To act as a hinge I cut a code 70 rail joiner<\/a> to about 2\/3 its original length.\u00a0 To hold it while cutting, I slipped it onto a piece of rail held in a PointForm tool.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Hinges (rail joiner) soldered in place at the end of the switchpoints.\u00a0 These hold the rail in proper alignment with the stock rail, but still allow the points to pivot enough.<\/p>\n

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Most of the time this method will work fine with the points soldered to the throwbar, there is enough play in all the parts to allow the points to pivot reliable.\u00a0 With unusually short points this method won’t work.<\/p>\n

I can move them well enough, but I am not confident that it will last, there is a bit of tension in the solder joints that I believe is a bit too much and will probably fail.<\/p>\n

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I have decided to use a method I described a few years back in a Fast Tracks Newsletter<\/a> (Ok, 5 years ago)<\/p>\n

This technique uses a spike that has had the blackening filed off.\u00a0 This spike is inserted into a PC board throwbar that has had the copper foil removed.\u00a0 The spike is then soldered to the switchpoint.\u00a0 This allows the spike to act as a hinge that can freely pivot.<\/p>\n

Since the forces being asserted onto the solder joint are not under stress, the joint is unlikely to fail.\u00a0 All the pressure of the switch machine will be on the shank of the spike, not on the solder joint, all the solder is doing is pulling the point back open. \u00a0 Its important to get a solid solder joint, removing the blackening from the spike can not be skipped.<\/p>\n

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This technique works very well and the points move freely.\u00a0 Its a bit fiddly, but worth the effort.<\/p>\n

One down, 27 to go…<\/p>\n

-T.<\/p>\n

On to Next Section…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pivot Points Once again we are getting some wonderful December weather, so its another good evening for some trackwork.\u00a0 (I’m note sure what the little green eyes are watching.) After another battle with the upper portion of the house, I am a little tired, so I only worked for a bit on the layout this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-front-page"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2057,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bronx-terminal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}