Part 4B Turnout in Street – Soldering Point/Mate Castings to Street Ties & Tools to Help

Assembling the Point and Mate castings and 2 copper clad ties together was done on a flat wooden or other soldering surface. I am calling the copper clad ties "street ties". The Point/Mate castings with soldered street ties assembly will be mounted on the layout later.

A square was used to position the 2 Point and Mate castings on the 2 street ties. Then to hold the 2 castings on the 2 street ties, a weight was placed on top of the castings to prevent any movement. Carefully check the gauge during this process. Remember I’m using the Right-O-Way castings.

After some careful checking, the 2 castings were found to be square with one another. This means the ends of the base of the castings are the same length and have matching details in the correct corresponding locations. It also means the ends of the pieces of rail extending from the castings are the same length. Now the parts are soldered together at the corners.

The red arrows point to the soldering locations. This photo was one of the "engineering" photos I took. I forgot to take any assembly/soldering photos.  The rail and brass ties on the right are explained below.

BTW - If the pieces of rail extending from the castings are NOT the same length, stop to find out why. If needed replace the "bad" casting or repair it.

While working on the Point/Mate castings an idea of a tool to hold the castings in gauge came to mind. This Post will cover 2 different tools to help with the building and installation of track on my modules.

The 1^st of the two are a tool made from pieces of brass for the ties and code 125 rail. The brass pieces are the same dimensions as the “ties” being used for the street trackage. The length of the rail doesn’t matter as long as the rail can be squarely soldered to the pieces of brass and in gauge!

These gauge tools can be used to hold the Point/Mate castings in gauge while you are making the castings and street “ties” square. Even though you have used a tool like this, still check the assembly for gauge using an NMRA track gauge!!

The red circle is around the gauge tools mentioned above. The blue circle is talked about below.

The other tool is to help with the track at the end of the module. The track at the end of a module must be able to connect with the track of another module. Check the EPTC module standards if you have any questions about this. My "end of module track tool" is made up of code 125 rail and brass pieces found in my left over brass bin.

This is the end of module track tool in action. The long piece of brass is made from a 3/16” “H” section about 8-1/4” long. It can be made from any brass shape just as long as it will not bend!

What you may be unable to tell is, the above track tool is attached on the center of track line. Two brass tabs were added to the "H" section so the tool can be screwed in place on the layout. As can be seen in the photo the lines drawn in as to where the rail is to be located were not accurately drawn. Always use NMRA track gauges and measure everything 2 to 3 times.

The object of the tool is to have the rails at each end of the module in exactly the same location! With this tool the rails will end in exactly the same location, square with one another.

In the next Post the Point/Mate castings will be installed on the layout.

Cheers,
Ed