The White River and Northern Model Railroad: Clinic

	The N Scale

	Model Railroad

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Styrene Tie Turnouts

At the time the White River and Northern II was being built, there were no turnouts available to match the Rail Craft Code 55 flex track I used. This didn't slow me down much, as I'd already had some experience handlaying turnouts for an N-Trak module that Rick Spano and I built together. However, I was not especially thrilled with the technique used, which was the old heated Pliobond and wood tie method. The chance of the rails getting out of gauge seemed a bit high for my liking, and indeed we did suffer the occasional popped rail.

I'm not sure what inspired me to attempt something so radical, but somehow I hatched the idea of using styrene ties and heating the rail until it melted partway into them. On the surface this does not sound as if the resulting bond would be strong enough to endure, but as it happens the bond turned out to be surprisingly good.

Turnout construction began by cutting 0.040 X 0.060 Evergreen styrene strip stock to tie lengths, and placing them directly onto the double-stick foam roadbed used for the track. Flex track was cut such that it extended well past both ends of the turnout. Ties were removed for the length of the turnout, and the track was dropped in place along the main route. The diverging stock rail was cut in the vicinity of the frog; then the rail on the point end of that side was slid out until it extended past the other turnout leg. Lastly, another short piece of flex was prepared to receive the extended end rail on one side, and the rail reached the frog on the other. Thus there was flex maintaining rail gauge on all three legs of the turnout.

The two stock rails were the first to be heated into the ties. Then, using standard rail gauges, the turnout components were assembled. The only unusual part here was the frog: the point of the frog was fabricated from ~0.050 thick nickel-silver and soldered to a brass pin. A hole was drilled through the subroadbed to receive the pin, and the frog point was heated until it was flush with the rails. A feeder wire was soldered to the other end of the pin under the subroadbed to provide electrical power, as the rails were not soldered to it. The point rails were last: depressions were carved in the ties to clear the moving points, and the points were shaped and installed such that they were sprung away from the stock rails.

The throw bar was a simple strip of PC board material notched to pass under the stock rails; the raised central portion engaged the point rails. A linkage hole was drilled sideways though the throwbar, and a straight length of spring steel rod passed though the hole. The other end of the spring was soldered to a fairly typical linkage assembly that was activated by a Tortoise switch machine mounted under the subroadbed.

Handlaying turnouts offered the freedom to do just about anything, and I did just about anything. I built turnouts from #4 through #20 or so. I made lap turnouts, where the points of one nearly met the frog of another; I even made an overlapping turnout pair that diverged in opposite directions within each other's boundaries—the frogs were adjacent to the other's points. (Somewhere I had seen this done in real life, but for the life of me I don't recall where.) Eventually I would have made a double-slip or two as well, plus a fair amount of dual-gauge trackwork.

During tracklaying time on the WR&N (~1989), I made one of these turnouts for Rick's Sceniced and Undecided. Situated on the mainline in the middle of a long, gentle curve, it has seen many years of use, and has been about as troublesome as any decent commercial turnout. However, recent changes in Rick's layout plans may spell doom for this last survivor of a singular construction technique that will not be repeated, at least by me.

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