6966 - 12’’ to the foot cant or super elevation
6919 - ‘N’ gauge cant
6921 - Canting Kato track
6923 - Where to drive fixing pins
6924 - Cleaning up
6934 - Securing packing
6935 - Raising ballast between Kato tracks
6940 - Final packing
Working with Kato Track
There are two Kato track laying films running on MRTV, ‘Filling in the ballast on Kato track’ and ‘Track laying with Kato’
The following pictures supplement some of the points made in these films, in particular track pinning.
On my own OO railway I used both Peco and Gaugemaster flexible track laid on 3mm ply cut to fit flush with the sleeper ends - on double track the ply runs the full width of the two tracks. Steel dressmaking pins passed through the sleepers and ply securing the two to the baseboard. The heads of the pins were nipped off before driving home flush.
Cant was dealt with as described in the films but ballasting – sadly long before Noch/Gaugemaster Ballasted Flexible Underlay became available – was by the traditional ‘wetting/dribbled PVA on to loose ballast carefully smoothed and shouldered’ method.
This railway was started some years before I abandoned the timber industry to join Gaugemaster. When model railways became my working environment the last thing I really wanted to do in my spare time was model railways! So this railway rests firmly in the early 1990’s and other railway modelling became orientated to sales aids and demonstrations for my job at Gaugemaster.
As always skills improve with practice and I now look at this railway and blush at some of the crudities and blunders which over time I shall correct and improve.
Back to the pins! – being used to driving pins through sleepers, this was my approach with the Kato track. As you will see in one of the films I struggled, Kato sleepers are very hard and take pins reluctantly – driving the pins through the ballast part of the moulding was much easier and the black heads of the pins virtually unnoticeable after painting the track.
If you have any points to make or need further advice on these topics do please contact me at mailto:support@ashdown.co.uk
The pictures were all 6 or 7MB and needed heavy scrunching for the web – hopefully they are not so compressed as to be useless.
Nick
Comments