Garden Railway Forum

I want to make some bent rail buffer stops like the LGB offerings but for Peco SM32 track:



The sleeprs I have sorted, however, I have been unable to make four identical pieces of bent rail using manual tools.

Ideas anyone please?

Cheers,

Tom

suggestion only ( i haven't tried it)

Place a piece of offcut scaffold tube or similar in vice horizontally with
four lengths of rail vertically placed between the tube and one jaw of the vice. Get a large piece of timber held against the tops of the rail sections and apply steady pressure evenly across the rails, curving them around the tube. Preheating the rail over the gas might help.

4 bits of rail in a decent vice and tap with a hammer till all 4 are bent over the same amount.

Using a piece of metal pole works very well, however, the rail starts to buckle after a while so I think it needs heating up. Even if you don't use the pole it still buckles or snaps.

Would an auto start gas blow torch that you can attach to a butane gas can be sufficient as I have not purchased one yet?

Thanks for the advice!

if you get really desperate, stick them in the flame on the ring of a hob for a while. soon get hot.

Bending together round a former is a goog idea. However, even if the rail is soft to start with, it will work harden as you bend it.

Best to bend it part way, until you feel it start to go hard, then anneal it. if that sounds difficult, don't worry. It means heat to a dull red( in subdued light ) then let it cool. You can quench it by plunging it into cold water if you like but it's not neccessary. A small gas torch will do the job or a gas cooker. If the torch is small, then get the rail hot locally, then move slowly along over the length you want to bend.

Since most rail section is manufactured by drawing through a die, it may be quite hard to start with, in which case it could be a good idea to anneal it before even starting to bend it.

One last thing: don't try to bend it hot, as you would steel. Most brass is hot short which basically means it's brittle when it's hot.

All this relates to home/hobby methods. There are all sorts of fancier ways of bending used in industry but they are hardly appropriate for knocking out a few bent rails for buffer stops.

Click to enlarge.

This is the buffer stop in Victorian Town at the Iron Gorge Museums.

Talk about a simple solution to a buffer stop problem. Nicely lo-tech, I like it

My favourite solution is a sleeper or a pile of dirt at the end of a siding. The main running line might get something more substantial where it peters out into the lawn - a sleep and a pile of dirt, or the Rolls-Royce version - a box with a sleeper attached to it at buffer height filled with dirt...

Peter in AZ