A Joint in the Making……….

…….or it could be a disaster in the making

An update to things happening on the Brymston RR is long overdue and will be along eventually but for now (spoiler alert) lets imagine that the RR now has its corner board and that there is some track on it.

Within that elusion the track will cross the join onto the next board and will need supporting and holding to gauge. So two lengths of double sided fibreglass PCB material have been cut, perforated and slit on both sides for insulation. The slits have been arranged not to coincide to maintain strength.

The rails have been soldered to the PCB’s whilst some bits of stick held them up against the underside of the rails.

Luckily the boards clamp together so there is plenty of force to trap a piece of clear plastic coated with Vaseline up the underside of the rails to prevent glue sticking across the joint.

Here one side has been glued and I am writing this whilst waiting for this to go off. The idea of the holes is to give the glue some key and to allow it to be forced all around the join. Two lengths of well know coffee store stirrer stick were also lathered in glue and slid in from behind so as to force glue into the join. When the fist lot has gone off I will glue the second side and then, later, cut the rails and hope the anti-glue strip did its stuff.

For belt and braces I may well drill a couple of the holes out and down in to the boards before gluing in some 2mm brass rod. The glued joint will probably be enough but the pins will give it some extra protection in shear if it gets clouted. Scenically the track will be in the gunge and weeds up to the rail head so the reinforcing won’t be seen