Wrack and Ruin

A mid-life crisis in narrow gauge

Rust Never Sleeps

Rust Here’s a tip: test your track by running a train both ways round it, with the engine facing in either direction. My circuit is pretty reliable if run clockwise with the engine facing backwards. If it hadn’t been for my junior navvie and her preference for forward facing in the other direction, I wouldn’t have discovered two bad rail joints. Which led to the first serious bout of track maintenance.

If run any other way than clockwise and backwards, the results are … well, let’s say “undefined”, but typically involve derailments or wheel slip. The latter seems to be caused by the trailing wagons pulling the loco back slightly and causing the front end to rise, which then fails to grip on some of the gradients. I tried gluing a short length of steel bar under the front axle for added adhesion, but it has only been a partial success. In retrospect, I wish I’d built the chassis and underframe first, allowing me to align the motor better and insert some extra weight under the bonnet.

The derailments were due to a misaligned rail joint, causing the wheel to knock, and another joint where the rail had slipped out of the joiner, creating a sudden wheel drop that generally caught my lightest plastic wagon. I underdid the adjacent plate and replaced the joiner. I also gave the misaligned joint a twist with the pliers to ease the disconnect. Should have used more bricks on the curves. One at each end and one in the middle aren’t enough to keep the track solidly in place; I’d have been better advised to place a paver under each joint midway.

While I had the tools out, I also replaced some of the mending plates that had rusted badly over winter. They’re zinc-plated, but in the worst throes of a Welsh winter, zinc apparently means zip. Worse, the screws had corroded too, in some cases so badly that it was tricky to undo them. I thought they were brass screws, but on reading the packet, it turns out that “brass” also means “zinc-plated” in this context. Being unable to extract the screws would have been quite bad, and the only solutions would have been to either cut the sleepers or wait further until the mending plate disintegrated altogether. However, greater love hath no man than that for his favourite tool (ahem), and I am currently betrothed to my Kamasa ratchet screwdriver, which thankfully did the job. A tip for removing chewed-up crosshead screws: use a slot screw bit of the closest size for extra grip. On removing the screw, the very worst thing that can happen at this point is for a small piece of ballast to drop into the hole - necessitating a frantic minute of poking around with a needle to clear the obstruction.

The mending plates have fared variably with no obvious pattern to the rusting. I used both yellow and silver zinc plates, but I’m fairly sure both types have corroded in places and survived in others. Some plates that were fitted first have lasted, while others that were used later have failed - and vice-versa. I suspect several inches of snow and wet leaves may have accelerated the process on the curves. Now I need to revisit B&Q to find something more durable. I’ve seen some heavy duty plastic-coated ones, which may be worth a try. Although in my experience, once the water finds a gap in the plastic then the plate starts rusting on the inside until the coating bulges and splits, and the resulting appearance is twice as ugly. Perhaps a coat of Hammerite would be better.