[fabben]

Hi

I'm quite new to this forum (one day old) and I'm making a trainset for my six yearold.
Unfortunately (for him) it's tuning more into a model railway than a train set.
I'm quite supprised how I gotten back into model railways again, after all these years.

I spent a whole week making a baseboard that folds in the middle and I've impressed myself how good it is.
But I need some advice on how the tracks come together?

I've made the boards fold with a bit of clearance but how do you get both sides of the track to butt upto each other?

I was thinking of soldering a fishplates, on one side of track only, and leaving just enough fishplate exposed so that it connects to the other track as the other baseboard folds down. Is this the right way to do it or is there a better way?

Fabben

 

[fabben]

Just an update on how the layout's going. It's been a long haul, in the garage every night building, soldering, laying track but I'm almost there. Last night was the "soak test" two trains, a pendalino and a euro star, hurtling around in opposite directions. Remember I'm building this layout for a 7 year old and a 4 year old, hence the speed test.

However it's not been all plain sailing - I've had to learn how to solder dropper wires to the track (I can do it now without melting sleepers) - My wood working skills have improved. But perhaps the hardest bit was when I put the Pendalino on the track's for the first time. That's when I discovered that the 0-6-0 shunter and it's mk I coaches, that I'd been testing with, could go around tighter bends, not so the Pendalino. All stations (which I glued down), the soldering and the track, had to come up and the curves re-aligned. Heart-breaking, but I got there in the end.

alastairq, I used the short track approach for joining the track across the bass boards, which is a bit fiddly but works very well.

So all in all I'm very pleased with myself. The kids have a trainset which has a lot more interest than just the Hornby track pack and hopefully it may keep them away from the Nintendo's and playstations for a while. When I get time I'll post some photos.

Fabben