Template to make your own track pieces

[DarkRedCape]

I was watching one of the random model train videos that popped up on my YouTube feed and one of them had something I’ve not seen before. It was a template to make your own track pieces. I’ve not seen anything like this for 00 gauge, but maybe others have.

The template part is at 12:50 into the video.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? I’ve looked into getting a few custom 00 pieces made, but being able to make your own track seems fun, even if very time consuming and more than likely more expensive than just buying the track piece.

[What About The Bee]

I've seen it before, but never attempted it. Gets great reviews. Plenty of youTube videos showing it off.

Fast Track templates hold everything in place while you solder. The track is essentially soldered to pcb blanks, shaped to resemble ties. So a plastic board with a copper face. The rail is soldered to the copper. Care must be taken to remove electrical continuity or a dead short will be created.

The reason I looked into custom track should be obvious. The LMR didn't run what we would call standard track. I'm still trying to determine how to get appropriately scaled fishbelly rail!

Bee

[ntpntpntp]

The finescale guys have been using paper templates and jigs like that for many decades to arrange the sleepers and solder rail to create their own track and points. I'm sure it's very rewarding and produces realistic custom trackwork if that's your "thing" :)

[Bulleidboy]

Not quite making your own track, but I watched a YouTube video very recently where Richard from New Junction Model Railway, wanted scale sleeper spacing. There is a template now available which enables Peco (and I suppose Hornby?) track to have the sleepers spaced correctly to scale. Each to there own, but I would never contemplate making my own track.

The template for the correct sleeper spacing is made by Railway Laser Lines

[Fazy]

your on about SMP track with the copper clad sleeper, it’s one of the ways to build your own track. It’s not that hard to do. But you need the tools and to be able to solder but with a bit of patience you can do some interesting track work. Templates are available for SMP by one and photo copy it to produce multiple points of the same type. For the more advanced there’s a program available to design your own templates from points to layouts in any scale or gauge.

[508006]

I bought a piece of copperclad board from maplins a few years ago and decided to just have a go at making straight track 1st as this allowed me to learn the right and wrong way to build it.

The best tip I came up with at the time was if you do not own any templates at all, join the rails you want to use to 2 pieces of set track, these pieces need to be tacked to the board to stop them from moving about while your working. The set track pieces will also help get the rail gauge correct aswell.

After making a few straight pieces of varying lengths I then had a try at curved track and this is where the problems begin. This is because yes the rails can again be connected to ready made track pieces, however, making curved track also requires the inner rail to be trimmed to the required length and fied before the other end could also be connected to ready made track.

The other issue here is keeping the middle of the rails in gauge while they are soldered to the copperclad board ( not easy I have to admit ) but it can be done even though it may take a bit of unmentionable words while making the pieces, certainly I cursed a good number of times mainly due to heat transfer through the rails or unintentional direct contact with a 40 watt soldering iron ( believe me its not pleasant ).

I would also like to state for the record that while it may seem like all I have done is talk about the downs of making track, it is 1 of those things that once you get into it you will well on the way to a full layout of self made track.

I have to also mention that I did try only once to make a turnout / point by converting an old peco point to copperclad board and to say the least it did not go well at all and was quickly halted and never finished.

Anyway enough rabble from me on this subject, hope any of what I have said helps but fair enough if it is of no help at all.

Above all have a go.