[Doug]

For those of you that have never done this, here are a few photos of the procedure of building the Tillig point kits.

Here is the EW1 85430 kit. 11° left branch point kit selling for 8,47 Euro. It is the same size as the EW1 85342 11° left branch ready-made point selling for 15,19 Euro. Prices at Lokshop.de. The big question is this: Is a saving of 6,72 Euro worth it if you are going to have to build this yourself?

See below the photos for my opinion on the saving.

Here is the content of the kit. Plastic sleepers and chairs all in one piece. End rails, point blades, frog rails and a pack of connectors, tie-bar and conductive strip.

The one slightly painful aspect of doing these points is that you have to round-off the point blades, at their thinnest part. A Dremel with a small grindstone makes light work of this. The rail indicated with the red arrow is done, the other not.

Rails are easily pushed through the chairs. Do this on a flat surface. I'l holding it up in the air for the photo.

If pushing gets tough, grip the rail with some small pliers and pull them through.

The point blades are bent just before the frog (at the arrow). Easy process due to the pre notched rails.

A conductive strip is slipped through the homes in the sleepers under the frog rails.

The ends of the strip are bent over in the direction of insertion of the frog rails.

The frog rails are then slid in. The finished frog detail.

I added the fish-plates - two insulated joiners on the inner frog rails and two metal joiners on the end rails.

The most delicate part of the process is bending the little metal strips on the ends of the point blades into the tie-bar and again to hold it on. Bending it once works fine. If you try to bend it back to get a better angle, it will snap off. I tried this once and was horrified to see both little bits snap off. I now have one point with no tie-bar, but I do have a place for this on the layout so no tears were shed. Bend the little strips once slowly and get the angle right first time.

Typical Tillig point - looks good.

Coaches and other rolling stock run so well over these points. Where a couple of twin-axle private owners wagons will sometimes de-rail over Peco pints when pushed, they will stay on perfectly on these Tillig points.

So is it worth it?

Looking at the comparison between the larger W3 85450 9° Flexi-points kit and the EW3 85352 9° left branch ready-made point, the W3 85450 kit sells for 13,25 Euro and the EW3 85352 sells for 16,94 Euro. A saving of 3,69 Euro. The bigger points have rails that have to be cut and trimmed, notches have to be cut for bending and the kit also has more parts to fit including the check rails. The disadvantage is that there is more work involved and it is more tricky to do. The advantage with the larger point fit is that it can be made into a left or right, straight or curved point.

Personally, I find this process for these smaller points very easy and once you have laboured through the instructions once, you can dispense with them for the other ones that you may be doing. I think there is a saving. The bigger points... I think that the saving is minimal, when looking at the work involved. Better to spend the extra 3,69 Euro and get a professionally made point.

I hope that this convinced some people to go out and build your own points from kits.

 

[Brian Considine]

Thanks for that excellent review Doug - most imformative.

Just a tad dissappointed though - I would have much prefered (& expected) them not to have plastic check rails - are the other Tillig points the same ?

 

[Doug]

QUOTE (dbclass50 @ 6 Mar 2007, 19:04) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Thanks for that excellent review Doug - most imformative.

Just a tad dissappointed though - I would have much prefered (& expected) them not to have plastic check rails - are the other Tillig points the same ?

The larger points - EW3 85352 9° for example don't have metal check rails, but rather hard plastic adjustable rails that slide up and down. They look fine as they are quite slim. The moulded ones on these smaller points work fine even if they look a bit chunky.

 

[pedromorgan]

its also much easier to keep them looking dark. on the real think the check rails are not bright metal like the running rails so they look rust colour.

Thanks for the review Doug. as DB says, most informative.

peter

 

[Rail-Rider]

Pictures speak a thousand words - this is excellent - as is the quality of the photos.

Two pictures bring up a question though - the last two.
It looks as though the blades are just slightly proud of their seating - no inset for them to snuggle in to.
In practice, does this ever snag on a flange?
A minimal amount of filing would eliminate the possibility, but perhaps it really isn't needed?

 

[Colombo]

It seems then that all Tillig would have to do is make a separate plastic sleeper base with the correct sleeper size and spacing, and we could have decent looking 00 points in kit form for about £6 per turn out.

Colombo

 

[Peter_Harvey]

Doug

Do Tilling produce points that are code 100 that can work with Peco stream line C100 flexi track?

Pete

 

[Doug]

I join my Tillig track to my Peco Code 100 track by simply shimming up the tillig track to the height of the Peco track.

The inside dimensions are of course the same so all you have to do is add some paper or card under the sleepers to raise the Tillig track to the right height. I glue my track down to the cork roadbed. I first glue the Peco if possible then add strips of paper, glued with PVA, under the Tillig track. I add a smooth and flat block of wood and weigh it down with dome lead weights.

I separate all my track with insulated joiners and where there is a Tillig to Peco join, I cut a Tillig plastic joiner in half and put the half onto the Tillig track side. The smooth side just touches the ends of the Peco track.

This picture shows me connecting Tillig track to the track from the Fleischman turntable which is similar to the Peco Code 100. You can see the card under the Tillig track in the front section that is about 15cm long. On a main line, you could use longer strips of paper, building up the thickness gradually.

 

[Peter_Harvey]

Ok thanks Doug

Pete

 

[Graham Plowman]

QUOTE (Rail-Rider @ 10 Mar 2007, 00:11) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Pictures speak a thousand words - this is excellent - as is the quality of the photos.

Two pictures bring up a question though - the last two.
It looks as though the blades are just slightly proud of their seating - no inset for them to snuggle in to.
In practice, does this ever snag on a flange?
A minimal amount of filing would eliminate the possibility, but perhaps it really isn't needed?

This highlights a very common mistake made by modellers of track, Tillig, Peco et al.

The reason the blades sit proud of their seating is because there are no prototypical knuckles in the stock rails for them to tuck into and/or the switch blades are not correctly planed either.

Real switch blades are filed tangentially and mathematically carry on for ever - they are not planed to a finite blade and would break if they were. It appears that Tillig turnouts rely on a very common modeller's misconception, which doesn't really surprise me.

Just a general observation and not aimed at anyone: Some of you may have seen my comments and my father's comments on the subject of track on MREMAG.
It is exactly the issues above which need to be resolved if we are to have reallistic model railway track, but which so few people seem to understand or want to understand.

Rail-Rider has highlighted a very practical issue which Tillig turnouts do not appear to have resolved correctly and could potentially result in derailments and/or gauge narrowing. A proper understanding/researching of real turnouts by the manufacturer would have found that the prototype actually has a solution for this very situation.

Have fun!

Graham Plowman

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (Colombo @ 9 Mar 2007, 15:35) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>It seems then that all Tillig would have to do is make a separate plastic sleeper base with the correct sleeper size and spacing, and we could have decent looking 00 points in kit form for about £6 per turn out.

Colombo

I dread to think what the tooling costs would be - I estimate something around £10,000 for just a couple of LH & RH points in 2 radius.

You would have to sell a hell of lot at wholesale price just to break even. Don't think it will happen for OO/UK. Probably the main reason why our Devonian friends keep churning out points with tooling made eon's ago.

For once I'd be pleased to be proved wrong !