Rotten Track

[Tony Bird]

Hi,

The Tenmille track which is used on by garden railway was laid about 8 years and is now past its sell-by date.



I have hundreds of new Tenmille wooden sleepers to replace the rotten ones. In theory the plastic chains are just a push fit in the wooden chairs however with the action of sun, rain and frost I found that the chairs tended to creep out of the sleepers. Gluing them in was only partially successful but what did work well was nailing them in with steel pins, the pins rusted in the wood making them very difficult to remove. I didn't like the prospect of using wooden sleepers again and all the work involved. Cannot really justify buying new track such as Peco with plastic sleepers , it is possible that I might be able to obtain a large number of second hand Peco sleepers but alas the Tenmille rail is a different section to the rail Peco use. I then had a thought could the Tenmille chairs be glued to the Peco sleepers and how much work would be involved? In practice not a great deal of work is involved, cut off the chairs on the Peco sleepers and the spigot on the Tenmille chair fits the the hole revealed with the removal of the chain it is even to gauge!



I have made a length of track which I will leave out in the weather to see if any problems occur I don't think there will be any; the dual gauge track used at the CMES has one of its '0' gauge rails in plastic chairs that are glued to plastic chairs and they give little trouble.



What to call the track if it is successful? Pecomille or maybe Tenco?

Regards Tony.

[tom_tom_go]

Well done Tony. I am sure if you have epoxy the chairs to the sleepers they will be fine as the glue is underneath the chair and protected from the elements.

Maybe you could brand the track as 'Tony's professionally bodged track & Co.'

[Soar Valley Light]

Nice work Tony, a very neat and well engineered solution.
The old Tenmille track certainly has character now! It would be a nice feature if you could retain a short section of it as a redundant part of your railway.

Andrew

[daan]

I must say that the rotten sleepers look most prototypical At the small museum railway which is a few metres further on from my home (stoomtram Goes-Borsele) , they have a section of track which is only allowed for the small diesel railbusses at snail speed. The sleepers there also have holes in them and some of them only have remains which are a sort of slight rememberance of the sleeper which used to be there once, a long time ago.

At the moment they are rebuilding parts of their trackwork, so the bad segments will eventually be gone.. Real railways have the same sort of problems to face..

[methsman]

Neat solution but peco will not supplie sleepers separately , I asked on my visit last year .

[TonyW]

AG069A or B (http://www.tenmille.com/16mmNGTrackAccessories.html) from Tenmille would be my solution to this problem.

[Tony Bird]

Hi Tony,

Many thanks for the information I didn't know plastic sleepers were available.

Regards Tony.

[TonyW]

My pleasure! I've been using Tenmille track exclusively for the past 30 years. Back then the competition's product was simply not up to the job as the plastic sleepers disintegrated in the sun's UV light (a problem since corrected) so Tenmille was the answer. Most of the track on my current line is over 25 years old, on its second railway and doing just fine.

[philipy]

I have succesfully used 5mm thick black Foamex as sleepering for turnouts. Its easy to cut into strips using a Stanley knife and a scrape with a saw blade gives a woodgrain effect to the surface.
I've had one in situ outside for almost 5 years and its still fine. That one was bullhead rail using Tenmille chairs with holes drilled for the chair spigots. Earlier this year I built one using Peco FB chairs glued to the sleepers with Plasticweld and so far so good.

[Tony Bird]

Hi,

Neat solution but Peco will not supply sleepers separately, I asked on my visit last year .

Fortunately if I continue down this route I have access to many hundreds of second hand Peco sleepers, not to mention many more wooden ones fitted with chairs.

Though using new Tenmille chairs looks the way to go if I decide I can afford it.

Regards Tony.