Code 25 switchpoints

They don't look like they could possibly work... but, surprisingly, the points happen to function flawlessly. The point rails are lightly sprung to favor one direction. The ends of the points were bent 90 degrees downward, then filed to form tongues that simply drop into shallow slots cut in the throwbar. The deliberate kinks in the stock rails don't look good, so for the next generation I'll try grinding the wire down, although being only 0.015 inch wide, it doesn't have much to grind. The soldering was also pretty sloppy—but I was more interested in making it work, at that point, than making it pretty.

Some modelers take issue with the point and stock rails being continuous, with no pivot joints. The fact is, some real-life turnouts "bend the rails" to move the points (indeed, that's the origin of the phrase). This has raised considerable discussion at some online forums, and I finally had to publish photographs of the real thing to disprove the naysayers, some of whom refused to believe that there were any jointless turnouts to be found in North America.

Image specs: The images were captured with a Canon 20D digital SLR.

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