With roadbed in place on the risers at the appropriate grades and vertical curves it’s finally time to start laying track. At least that’s what it seems like to the students. But there are a number of design decisions that need to be resolved before any track can actually be fastened to the homosote.

First, are there any holes or other incisions that need to be made in the roadbed before switches go down? That depends on how I plan to throw the points and the specific design of the switches I plan to use. I have enough old used Walther’s/Shinohara code 83 switches salvaged from an old layout to be economically attractive to reuse, but they’re not “DCC-friendly.” They’re working pretty well on the Inglenook, but I have to adjust the shape of the points from time to time to avoid shorts between wheel backs and opposite polarity points. I’m a bit nervous about getting consistently reliable operation out of them as they stand, but I’d like to avoid replacing the brass bridges at both the pivot and throw rod ends of each point assembly if I can.

It’s funny, all the discussion about live or dead frogs seems crazy to me because I’m accustomed to powering my frogs so that seems trivial. But I’m avoiding rebuilding those point assemblies like it’s just out of the question, even though I’ve scratchbuilt a fair number of complete turnouts over the years.

However, the thing that’s really grinding away at the back of my mind is the appearance of those soldered brass bridges. They bother me, and frankly some of the amazing photographs on this forum have influenced me so much that I don’t think I’ll be able to live with them.

But to get things moving I decided to install three of them as-is on the staging yard throat. They’ll be mostly hidden behind a scenery hill and if they give me any trouble, either electrically or emotionally, I can upgrade them later.

Although I’ve been well satisfied with the Caboose Industries manual throws (with contacts) that I installed on the Inglenook, I’d like to reduce the amount of “hand of God” action to an absolute minimum.  So I’m going with manually operated switches with fascia-mounted actuators, either push-pull knobs, garden railway switchstands a la Trevor Marshall, and/or ganged Hump Yard Purveyors levers when we're simulating a tower installation.  (Remember, we have a superabundance of operators so I need to create more roles and positions rather than fewer.)

Another desire is for operating near-scale switchstands with targets that turn when the switch is thrown. There have been many elegant designs described over the years, and I want to implement one of them.

I see Fast Tracks Bullfrogs described favorably all over the place so I decided to give them a try. I ordered a ten-pack, built the first one and set my students to work on the other nine. The instructions are good and the design is very clever, but any assembly task is dramatically simplified when you can work from an example artifact. The students really enjoyed putting them together.

I liked giving them some first hand experience with well-designed laser cut parts. It’ll help them do better work when they design their own parts later, using anything from an Xacto knife to a 3D printer.

The student in the background above is working with some scrap copper - just experimenting with cutting it, bending it, shaping it with a hammer, and punching holes in it.

Other students nearby are working on their computers, still others are shaping and polishing stones.

There is a wonderfully loose kind of conversation going on among all of the students. It’s raining outside.

We installed one of the bullfrogs under a hole we’d drilled at the switch rod location of the first switch and temporarily pinned down the switch. I explained to the students that the actuator wire needed to be at “top dead center” and the switchpoints needed to be in the middle of their travel when we positioned the mechanisms so that the spring force would be approximately the same in both thrown positions.

We straightened a large paper clip to use as a temporary push-pull rod and drilled a hole in the front of the benchwork frame for it. A couple of quick bends of the wire and we had our first operating turnout!  Yay!

But wait, there was a problem. The geometry of the bullfrog meant that the motion of the throw rod was opposite that of the push-pull rod. When you pushed in (away from your body), the points moved towards you, and when you pulled towards you, the points moved away. That just wouldn’t do.

To make a long story short, the students in the room collaborated and in about 20 minutes they had a fix for the problem.

Figuring this must be a common request I went back to the Fast Tracks page and sure enough, there’s the Sidewinder. But I like our version, and the kids have already figured out how they’ll modify it to drive a tiny switchstand target mounted on the headblocks (which we'll relocate to the outside of the ladder)! 

Jeff Allen