Ensuring Reliable Track Work and Preventing Derailments

Hi, I'm Doug Hodgdon, from the model railroad Academy. And I'm here with- Mike Swiridow from the pine County history museum minority world club. And we are going to talk about reliable track work in this segment and preventing derailments. And I just wanted to show a few of the things that I use to help prevent derailments. And of course, trackers important. Locomotives can be important too or cars if they're out of gauge. But in this segment, we're going to talk about making sure your track is right and this display we have sectional track. And I like to use, when I lay my track, I like to use these. These are actually called ribbon rail track gauges but I wanted to show how they work and they're available in multiple, multiple radiuses. As you can see I have just about every radius they ever made, it can. Because you never know what you're going to kind of track or getting ended up with. They're all are also available from other manufacturers. Now there's some wooden templates you can buy and some longer plastic ones, but these anyway I've used these for years and they're going to show you what I use, but even with sectional track you want to lay that straight gauge in there and get it across the rail joint. So you know that you have a true joint there. You don't want to have a kink because that's going to that's the trains won't be happy. So even, even in a area like this, you know, when you don't want to make sure sometimes the switches from the factory, aren't perfectly true. They can be boated a little bit. So even when I lay a switch down, I make sure that the straight section of the switches is true. Yes. So just as an idea here, you can see, I have, you know just about every radius in the book, there's a 22 inch radius is an example. So depending on your track work, and this can be with a section track or flex track, it wouldn't matter. It all worked the same way Right now, the, the flex track, what we've done here obviously you've got the straight portions of it that you can lay out with the center line and and using your guides out there where a lot of people have trouble with flex track is when they're joining the flex track in a curve. And that's why I make sure when I'm joining the flex track I use a gauge like this. And you know, of course now you're going to know what your radius is ahead of time. You're going to lay your radius out then use the appropriate radius and then actually put this template into the curve as your. Right Attaching the track down. And if you're gluing the track down leave this in until the glue dries. Now a lot of what we've done here in addition to using that is we've taken the ends of the track where you come together and we've actually used some pliers and made just a little bit of both a little bit so that you could continue with that. Otherwise you do wind up depending on the radius of the of the track, you're going to wind up with a kink there. So if you can try to get that kink out by either using a little bit a plier type deal to get a little bit of a bend in there certainly helps. And then you get the joiners in there and it works out perfect. And there again, gluing your track. You know, I've used like say finishing nails. Yes. You know taking like a six penny finishing nail and just tap it into your layout to hold the track in position and total the glue's dry. So I have this into the curve and then put a finishing nail in there and hold the curve in place. And then sometimes we'll even take some of that super glue and just super glue that real joint right down to the ties to prevent it from wanting to spring back. Right. Yes. So that's a good point. And then we were talking earlier about, Mike and I were talking earlier about switch frogs. And this is an example of an Atlas switch frog. And this is the kind of the beginner of track work, the snap track switch. Right. And they're not made to the closest tolerances. There's a big dip here at the at the frog because they made it make it wide. And the national model railroad association has standardized the everything, including the, the depth of the flange and the wheel and the depth of the flange way in the track. And there's a, a template that you can use an N M, N M R A metal template that will give you all of that. All those specifications you need. So I mentioned to a fellow the other day is that I use a bottle body putty that you can buy in a tube like you use on a model automobile or something like that and put it in there and fill in that hole to the point where the flange will actually ride over that frog just momentarily in that, in that spot right here. Right Now, you have to remember too, a lot of the folks that are out there working with model railroad equipment are buying it used from years back. And there's going to be differences in like you said, the flanges, the wheel sets, the track. Now you have the different codes out here. You've got the 83, the 100. So the difference in Heights, you go on to make sure that when you lay the track you join this thing at the proper height. True, true. And that's what the switches as well. So a lot of times when you, when you have differences, you you get this stuff used or whatever, rather than going with new equipment, watch where you place these rails and make sure you've got the same code rail from one to the other If your buying more track, make sure you stay with the correct rail size. And it's true that the, now this is called 100 brass and then the bigger the rail is, the more forgiving it is. And so if you're using small rail which is more realistic. Yes. It's also can be more fussy Right. And then the flanges too. I mean, particularly if you're going with a an older locomotive or an older car and you've got the smaller code, now your flanges may be a little bit wider. So if you go through the frog in here sometimes what will happen if you're going to live through a diamond, for instance, that flange will ride up inside and actually lift the wheel off the rails. So it breaks the contact and it stops. So now you have to figure out, you know, how to correct it. And in my case, we had that situation happen and we actually had to make the flange deeper for the older. I said, old like European style Right, because the flanges are much deeper in those older cars. Kind of a sharp pointed plan flange. Yeah, so you have to, you have to be careful. So some of the problems that you may have in the track work may not necessarily be the track itself. Right. But you have to look at the wheel sets that you have Well we can do another segment on wheel-sets. But I mean, I'd recommend sticking with the NMRA wheels. If you have a car with those older wheels I would just write, switch 'em out. Now, the other thing would be on curves in grades, a real road, roads use transitions. And if you have the space you can actually transition into a grade or a curve. Right. You know, a real roller isn't gonna go, you know, like that they're going to have a transition into the, into the grade. And also the same thing will be true with a curve. They kind of spiral into it. So if you have the space, you can do that and lay it out. As it's not so easy with the sectional track. Right. That's a fixed radius, but I would recommend that. And I use a, you know, like a real stiff metal like a three foot metal rule. And you can, you can actually bend that enough to just, you know, as rigid enough. So it doesn't bend too quickly but you can get kind of a smooth arc out of it. Right? Okay. Next plea. This is my favorite little level here. This is a Johnson number one 25 level. They're still available. You can get them. But the, but the one thing I wanted to mention is if you put it on the track model, railroaders tend to make sure their track was true with a straightway. But what if your track is not level crosswise? And that's going to cause derailments unless you're doing something like you know, bank Curt, bank curve or something like that, but super elevated curve. But normally normally you want your track to be level crosswise. And so I use this little level and put her in the track and make sure that I'm level crosswise. If you have a dip on one rail and not the other rail, well that could cause you a big trouble. Right. So I also do this type of thing where I put a, put a straight edge across the the rail joint to make sure there's no vertical kink at the rail joint, you know put a straight edge across the right on the top of the rail. Make sure you don't see any daylight under there. Right That's all just good little tricks. Now, the last thing I want to show you is, you know in the old days, in fact you talked about it the on the model railroad here is that you had to figure out grades using mathematics. Right. Which is great, except our brains are getting older. And so nowadays, you know, technology I hope you can get this on camera but this is a digital level that that actually reads out the gradient. So you don't have to actually do anything other than set the set, the grade, read the level and you're done, which really, really makes it a lot a lot easier to make sure your grade is true. And most real railroad mainline railroads are 2% is really a maximum. I mean, that's kind of a maximum generally speaking for model railroads, too. If you have a mining railroad or industrial railroad or something, you can go steeper but a good rule of thumb is for a standard railroad with, you know say medium-sized trains and big equipment. I have to go not to go steeper than 2%, right. Or that we didn't talk about radius. I guess it did that. That depends on the scale of course but be careful not to get too tight radius for the equipment you want to use. Exactly. Big, modern, long equipment. It's going to take a bigger radius. Right. So that's a another point to remember. That's exactly right. Did we cover everything? I believe so. Oh, okay. Then we're done. Unless you want to put that on there and just, you know show them how that thing actually goes. I'll just lift this end over here. There we go. And we'll just put a grade on that thing. So thank you for watching this segment. This was perfect so that people can understand how the the train. Good track is very important. I mean, when you have good equipment and good track, but a good track work is the beginning It reduces the frustration of having to reset locomotives that We want to be happy in our hobby. Yes.