Thanks Peter. I am pretty sure I followed you. Unfortunately since i really have not yet decided on a wheel set I can’t answer that question other than to say I doubt seriously that I will be using fine scale wheels.
The loco motor blocks are Bachmann Lil Big Haulers and are certainly NOT fine scale. For the cars I will run on this I have three choices I am playing with. The first will be my own printed wheel IF i can find a resin that I think will be tough enough to do the job and hold up over time, I am highly doubting this. The second and most probable choice will be to use a spoked wheels from the “train department” that are made for small 7/8ths cars. Not sure how fine of a profile they have but in the pictures I don’t think I would call them fine scale. The third choice is would be the Bachmann small whee lsets.
Now I am not really sure how to label my rails in conjuction with the diagram but I am sure I can muddle my way through so you get the picture. Since I am building a stub switch I will start from the left in the diagram. So I don’t have “points” I have two independent sets of rails the ones that will go straight through and the diverging rails. The are set so that the facing edges are set 3.5mm apart. I wouldn’t think this would be an issue of being too wide as much as not wide enough. Since the rails leading in from the left that slide back and forth are whats determining things. provided I make the stops perfect so they line up with two sets of rails.
Moving to the right I have a 3.5 mm gap between the same faces (the ones that oppose each other forming the gap) of the check rails and the running rails. And by the same token I have a 3.5mm gap between the wing rails and the running rails.
Now the ne place where I do understand what you are saying and the only time I have ever treid to make my own frog before is the crossing. I do see what you are talking about with the wheel dropping in. I did struggle with that before. given that everything has a 3.5mm gap will I have an issue with wheels dropping in? I also realize this has to do a lot with wheel diameter and I am using smaller diameter wheels so I suspect that will make the problem worse.
So I do think I followed you Pete. And if I were actually hand laying the switch with components in hand it would be a lot easier to see where adjustments need to be made. Doing it in a virtual world is a little different, I can’t move things around and run a wheel over it.
So with this discussion and what I have said about where and what gaps I have, is there an obvious inherent problem that I need to address before I print my first teat track and see what happens? Not having built them before I don’t have a trained eye to see what you more experienced switch builders will see as glaring.
Nice thing about printing is that its only resin. So if I print one and it doesn’t work its not the end of the world. But I would also like to fix any galring issues that someone might see right off.
