Friday, July 10, 2015

Rail Spikes

So, having arrived at a much better approach to painting rusty surfaces I've now turned my attention to the track, specifically how I'm going to affix the rail to the sleepers. The bridge I'm using as inspiration for my entry to the Dave Brewer challenge, which is still a secret for now, uses a fairly light rail held to the sleepers using metal spikes.

All the track I've hand built before has used copper clad sleepers and I've simply soldered the rail in place. Clearly this won't work for rail held down by spikes. So firstly I'm going to use sleepers made from plywood (hence my experiments at painting wooden sleepers) but more importantly I need a source of spikes that will hold the rail in place. My intention is to use code 40 rail, which is pretty small, and I haven't been able to find anyone who sells spikes for such small rail. What I did find though was a series of articles in NG&IRM Review by John Clutterbuck (which were republished in 2008 as a free download) about making track. While John models in 7mm scale using larger rail, he happens to make his own spikes from..... staples.

The approach I've taken mostly follows John's description but with a few changes to take into account the smaller rail size.


I bought the smallest staples I could find but they are still made from quite a thick metal (about 0.45mm) so having used masking tape to keep them together I filed the edges down a bit to make the corner a lot thinner (I had to use diamond files to really make much impression on the steel). Once I'd filed down both sides I used a set of track cutters to cut off the legs of the staples keeping just a tiny amount of the curve. All the spikes were then separated from each other before soaking for about 5 minutes in nail varnish remover (the stuff I "borrowed" from my wife is acetone free but I'm guessing acetone would also work) to ensure the metal is clean and that the plastic coating applied to staples has come off; you end up being able to see the bits of plastic floating in the solution. The spikes were removed from the nail varnish remover (a magnet makes this nice and easy) and dried before being soaked in Carr's metal black. They turn black almost instantly if they are nice and clean but again I left them for about 5 minutes, before removing and drying them.

I still need to figure out the best way of actually using the spikes to fix rail to sleepers but for a quick test I drilled a small (0.45mm) hole and pushed a spike through the sleeper, added the rail so I could accurately drill a second hole for the second spike. Once both spikes were firmly pushed through I held them in place with a drop of superglue added from below. Once this had dried I cut off the excess spike and filed them flush with the bottom of the sleeper.

For a first attempt at making and using rail spikes I think this has worked well.

9 comments:

  1. This is going to be good. I would be tempted to glue the rail to the sleepers as well. This doesn't look too strong but it does look perfect.

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    1. Ah yes, I did actually smear a tiny amount of glue onto the sleeper between the spikes to help hold things in place. I didn't admit to it though as I wasn't actually sure if it was necessary as the joint seemed fairly strong even before the glue had time to set.

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  2. Those spikes look pretty accurate. I have a small collection of real spikes from various quarry railways and they are surprisingly small...your look just right. (rummages in cupboard for staples )

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    1. It's a real shame I can't take the credit for the idea of cutting up staples as I think it's genius! Looking forward to seeing what you do with the idea :)

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  3. Very good, but I must add a small point (sorry!). Spikes are staggered, that is the two outer spikes will be towards one end of the sleeper, and the two inner spikes will be closer to the other edge. This is to prevent the sleeper twisting on the rail which would affect the gauge.
    Whether this would be noticable in 4mm scale is debatable.

    I've knocked a few spikes into sleepers in my time...

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    1. You're right of course they should definitely be staggered. I drilled the hole for the first spike in the centre of the sleeper without really thinking about it and so didn't then bother to stagger the second spike. On the actual model things will be even more complicated as each sleeper appears to use 6 spikes; two on the outside of each rail and one on the inside.

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  4. I know that you all know the size of things when you are posting but as an ardent non-modeller and follower an occasional millimetre scale would help me get things into perspective.

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    1. Sorry about that. I actually didn’t know the dimensions of the rail I just bought virtually the smallest stuff I could find! Anyway to give you some idea how small things are the sleeper is 3mm wide and the rail is 1mm tall (the code 40 means it is 0.040" tall). In other words these things are eye-wateringly small, so it's a good job I have a magnifying lamp bolted to the desk :)

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    2. Thanks Mark. Eye-wateringly small is right!

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