Bridge Track

[Joseph Hall]

Thought I'd throw this out there to get some ideas.
Bridging the gap between 2 modules. I've seen several methods, was wondering which are better, which are not so good.
1st one is in Dave Frary's "PRR Middle Division"- he builds 6" bridge tracks on masonite and drops them in between the roadbed, slides the rail joiners on and they look pretty good. The only drawback for me is I don't have a router to rout out the 1/4" slot for the masonite to drop in.
2nd one was in a Free-mo article in RMC a few months ago- short individual sections of rail held in place by the rail joiners. Looked pretty easy, but seems that even 2" individual pieces of rail could be problematic. I'm only guessing here, may work perfectly.

Would be interested to see what experiences everyone else has.
Thanks.
Joe

 

[MasonJar]

Hi Joe,

Welcome to The Gauge!

The modular forum is a bit slow these days, so try expanding to view all "since the beginning" at the lower left of our screen when viewing the list of threads. We have ahd this discussion before, but I don't remember all of it...

At www.hotrak.ca we use 6" sections of Atlas snap track. The cork roadbed goes to the end of each module, so it is only the track that gets dropped in, alhtough some members have made their own custon joiners where their modules comprise a set that is always together. The general rule is that the Railjoiner stays on the module, and only the joiner track is removed. All standard module track ends with a section of snaptrack to facilitate this.

We used to use 9" snap track, and in my opinion, the longer the track, the easier a transistion it is - more of a distance to forgive slight mis-alignments. The drawbac of course is unballasted track for a longer space.

Hope that helps.

Andrew

 

[Russ Bellinis]

Our club uses a 4" joiner track. It may make alignment more critical, but our standards require a minimum radius of 36", and the 4" joiners allow a 90 degree corner module with easments to fit on a 4' x4' module.

 

[Catt]

The plan for our (IronRailZ) 2TRAK modules is the tried and true ATLAS code 80 flex track with track and roadbed run to the joining edge of the modules.the rail itself will be trimed back 2" and there will be 4" sections of rail with the joiners kept with them.

We are not worried about track alingment as the track for the entire layout will installed once the modules are completed to the track stage.

Another point of interest is that this layout is a semi permnament display.

 

[MasonJar]

If you want to eliminate "bridge" track or joiners, look at this information.


Andrew

 

[TR-Flyer]

Hi:

Here is a modular club that has eliminated bridge tracks. We see them a lot at shows in our area. I am hoping that someday I can transfer this idea to our club.



http://www.mindspring.com/~gugliotta/id4.html



This page shows how they build their modules. They are a very dedicated lot and it shows in their module layouts. Check out the rest of the pages on their website.



http://s-ss1.home.mindspring.com/id9.html



Regard’S’,

Ted