![]() I can only see warping the rails and losing the smoothness of the curve. ![]() If I had had it any higher, I might have mangled the track and not cut it smoothly.ĭavid - You've really boiled your fastrack and changed it's radii? that sounds amazingly challenging to do correctly. (I think!) I had an old pretty dull blade on my table saw (and yes it tis a large flat table with a big rotating blade coming up from underneath) so I wasn't too concerned when it brushed the metal. A metal blade would hate the plastic and a wood blade would chew up the metal and not cut it smoothly. I don't have one, but doesn't the blade need to come all the way down in order for it to cut? In that case you would need to cut both the metal rails and the plastic bed in one swipe. George - I think a miter saw would be a bit more challenging. Chances are I'll need to do it again before my layout is complete. I found it fun and a good learning experience. Hey, I didn't set the house on fire or even burn my pinky (it was my index finger!) It was also my first soldering job since I was 15 or so. ![]() Now, the wood was in the way of the short simple connections so I needed to solder it across the whole piece to find terminals I could reach. However, a few days later I changed my layout slightly (again because I was missing my 1 3/4 pieces) and moved it to a section where it is not going to serve as a block. I was going to use this as a block section so I didn't solder any jumpers. You can also see it in some of the other shots. When the glue dried I trimmed it with an exacto knife and filed it down. I cut up a silver cream cheese container top and glued larger pieces of it into the gaps. It serves to insulate the track sections (if you are creating electrical blocks and also can make the gaps less noticible and more smooth for the train (less derailing). This is the idea I found from my HO modeling book. The next thing I did was fill in the gaps on the rails. Not easy to find in my posession! Therefore, you can also see that I needed to trim a few of the screws so they didn't protrude below the trackbed and raise the track off the table. After drilling pilot holes I scewed in the wood the track to the splint.Īs you can see, I used a few different random screws I could find in the house. I drilled two countersink holes in the railbed (on each piece) and then cut a piece of 1/4 inch plywood to fit under the molded plastic. ![]() So I devised a way to place a wood block underneath the railbed to give it strength and hold the sections together. If you are going to mount the track on a table you could add jumpers to the rails and call it done, but I am not sure how much I am going to screw my track down, so I wanted something a little more structurally solid. (I succeeded for the most part!) I then pulled out my dremel and cut the ties. I then took the track to my table saw and set the blade hieght to cut through the plastic railbed, but not the metal ties. I first tried a hacksaw and just knew I wasn't going to get a good cut. I didn't want the newly cut ends starting to poke up. I wanted to keep the ends intact (for obvious fastrack reasons) so I hacked out the middle section between two sets of tabs that hold the track down. I was inspired by articles I read here along with an article I have in an HO scale modeling book. I was so excited that I didn't take pictures along the way (which I intended to do) but I took plenty of shots afterward. I figured I had nothing to lose so I thoguht I would pull out a 10 inch straight and start hacking away. That left me hurting to get the proper dimentions on my layout. Made my first order of fastrack the other week and everything came.except all my 1 3/4 inch pieces. ![]()
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