Turn to the Right

Having now recieved my order for more rail I've continued on with my O14 point building experiment. The first attempt was for a very tight Type 1 point which in retrospect was going to be a struggle even for short wheelbase locos so for my second attempt I've switched to the slightly less severe Type 2 point. Of course with more rail to hand I've gone a lot further than just building the central frog section, in fact I've built an entire point.

I've deviated from the suggested instructions in quite a few places though as I've built the point onto copperclad sleepers rather than the suggested plastic sleepers. This meant that I had to gap the rails to ensure that the polarity of the frog could switch when the points changed. I also simplified the tiebar slightly by not trying to fit nice looking plates and rivets but using a bit of wire instead. Of course photos on their own don't show you if any of this was successful or not so here is a video of me testing it.

So yes it does work, but I'm not entirely happy with it. Mostly I'm not happy with the hinges. Drilling the holes to make the two parts of the rail line up properly was a real pain. So having recently seen someone else build one without hinges where they relied on the rail flexing instead I'm going to have another go and see if that is a better approach. Still not bad for a first attempt.