THE BRYMSTON RR #26 – TURNOUTS

Firstly, its been ages since I added anything to The Brymston RR Saga. This is a true reflection of how much I have done in the last 18 months. I may have messed up and made a reckless commitment!  Immediately after this years Trent Valley Group Modelling Day in January some idiot [me] may have promised the organiser [also me] that The Brymston RR could appear at the January 2027 event.  First thoughts were that if me and me told no one then we might get away with not mentioning it again but the real screw up was that I did it in front of witnesses.

Now at the moment only the curved board has any track on it, and then only on the lower level. Its also the only board with the start of any scenery on it!

Better get on and lay some track then. Hold your horses. A reminder, this layout is 0n3 and there is virtually no ready to run track available so its all going to need to be hand built.

An added variation is that all the turnouts on the layout are going to be stub turnouts.

If you are not familiar with these then have a look at the picture of the three way stub. There are no blades. The approach rails are just moved to line up with the route you want to take. The advantage of them is that they cab be shorter than a standard turnout. Disadvantages are they are low speed, no positive locking of the rails and you’re actually bridging a gab crossing from the switch rails to the fixed rails. They were popular for their simplicity and whilst the main line moved away from them they remained common on industrial, and low budget railroads such as a logging and minerals concern like The Brymston RR.

THE TRACK PLAN

Might as well start with the difficult stuff! Entry on this board is straight into an assymetric three way stub. The line up to the higher level is a #5 angle whilst the one towards the front of the layout is a #4. This leads straight into a second three way but this is a symetric #5. The #4 route will limit what can go that way but that line will likely be the storage track with something like the cabeese parked on it. By taking the straight road through each you get to 2 road of the shed and it being a straight run through the turnouts anything that makes it round the curve will be able to make it to the shed,

THE CUNNING PLAN

As I type this the 2026 York Model Railway Show is two weeks away and I have a demo table there with two mates so I have decided its three days of point building for me. There are some things that need doing in advance for this and one is to make templates

The first problem is that Fast Tracks free printable turnout templates don’t include three ways or stubs so some editing was attempted

When it looked like that would work some more effort was put into modifying the standard points with this result

After that the templates were laid on the layout to check they fit so a removable base could be made for them. That’s ongoing and I’ll report that in the next episode.