Timber spacings within turnouts

[Rob Manchester]

Hello Martin and all,

I wish to create turnouts ( and plain track ) that have equal spacings between the timbers - along the lines of the Peco turnouts that are available in a .box file on Templot. I set up the plain track as CWR with no rail joint markers and a single sleeper as per the help notes. When a turnout is inserted the timbers in the switch area are spaced fine but how do I maintain the spacing through the rest of the turnout ( the T and X timbers ) ? I would like to be able to do this without timber shoving if possible so the turnout can be inserted at any point in the trackplan. I hope that makes sense - my brain is having a bad day today - maybe I should stick to crosswords !

Thanks
Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

I wish to create turnouts ( and plain track ) that have equal spacings between the timbers.

@Rob Manchester

Hi Rob,

Why do you want to do that? It doesn't correspond with any prototype -- at the very least you ought to have closer spacings at the rail joints.

What scale, gauge and spacing are we talking about?

There are settings you can change in Templot to achieve such a result, but you need to decide the spacing and turnout size first. You can't just make equal spacings a setting for any size of turnout or spacing.

so the turnout can be inserted at any point in the trackplan

If the reason for doing that is to prevent disturbing the existing plain track spacings, it doesn't need the same spacing through the turnout, or constant spacings through the turnout. It requires only that the length of the turnout is an integer multiple of the plain track spacing.

For stuff like this I'm not sure that Templot is the best software to use. Have you looked at doing it in XTrackCad or 3rd PlanIt?

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
Thank you for that. I should have just explained what I was doing ! Achap that knew I used Templot asked me if I could do a plan for some turnouts. He purchased a layout ready built but the people who shifted it for him damaged quite a few turnouts that were bridging baseboard joints. The layout used RTR track of unknown source and it has rigid RTR 'ballast' sections under the track, similar in appearance to the old Peco foam underlay sections. The rails and timbering had suffered badly but the underlay was mainly OK. My brain told me he needed a Templot plan to rebuilt the track onto but in reality we can probably just use the timbering spaces in his underlay to make up some new turnouts.

Sometimes overthinking a project is not the best way to go !

Thanks again.
Rob