Switch Rebuild: Part 5

Introducing my 100% recycled point rails. Sometimes it's hard to believe how one can so easily overlook a painfully simple, obvious thing. I just needed some plain sheet steel—a square inch was more than enough—about ten thousandths thickness. It had to be steel because the points need to respond to magnets.

As I normally do at times like these, I started digging through my material supply drawers. Hmmm, nothing but nickel, brass and stainless steel. My junk parts drawers were likewise devoid of useful amounts of sheet steel. Out in the garage, there was plenty of steel—hinges, brackets and whatnot—but all uselessly thick.

So I made a trip to the local home improvement store, where I spent roughly an hour wandering up and down the aisles looking for inspiration. The closest I came to something suitable was a ten-foot-long strip of flashing. It was only three bucks, but I simply could not see buying ten feet of metal only to clip an inch off the end. And I had no need for flashing, so the rest would just clutter up the garage.

I'd invested roughly two hours of total time in my quest over the course of about two weeks. It was starting to get absurd. Then, somewhere along the line—I'm clueless as to what triggered the thought—it occurred to me: a tin can lid. And there in the bottom of the recycling bin was exactly what I needed. (I have no idea what the can contained, but I do know it was best by February 2013.)



As an aside, this little adventure took me back to my very earliest days as a model railroader—back to a time when scratchbuilders were creative and made structures out of cardstock removed from new shirts, or benchwork out of discarded pallets, or locomotive boilers out of... wait for it... old tin cans. It's been so long since I've had to think that far outside the box that I'd forgotten what it was like to be that resourceful. Embarrassing.



Anyway, it wasn't long before I'd sliced the can lid into long, slender rectangles, and sanded the edges true. The final shape I needed was a very narrow, stretched-out L, which I cut out of the rectangles with a jeweler's saw and cleaned up with jeweler's files.



Once I had the points whipped into shape and bent to fit the switch geometry, I was both elated and vexed. It was a thrill to see the parts fit with absolute perfection; in fact, they actually looked better than I'd expected.



At the same time, I had substantial doubts about how to attach them to the fulcrum. My plan up to this point was to bond them in slots cut in the top of a block of plastic. But seeing the finished parts in situ, I could tell there wouldn't be enough plastic left at the bottom of the slots to hold together. Nor would there be sufficient surface area to reliably bond the sides of the points to the plastic. I was looking at a situation where I'd probably have to solder something to the point parts to give the assembly enough strength to withstand operation.

This did not, however, diminish my hopes of it being "manufacturable" one single bit. There are manufacturing processes that I cannot reproduce by hand, but that would ensure a very strong and simple assembly—indeed, the new point design could be made in a manner substantially similar to how the points in Eishindo's switches are made now.

And so the assembly of my new "recycled" points into the final working part will wait for the next installment, so as to give me a chance to cogitate on the matter.