Garden Railway Forum

Does anyone have any experience of Cliff Barkers gauge 1 track components? They are standard gauge but at Gauge 1 they shouldn't be too small for 16mm narrow gauge. The two bolt ones in particular look like they might be just the job. Probably quite similar to the FR version.

Any experience or advice would be much appreciated.

I have used his Gauge 3 point levers (brass) for outside use with Peco points.

Good quality casting and they work just like the real thing

I would of used his stainless steel rail if I had know about it from my beginnings in 16mm.

Yes, I do.

I imagine that you have in mind the whitemetal two-bolt chairs that plug into wooden sleepers cut to 16mm sizes. This forms a traditional type of track that has served well provided the sleepers don't rot and the holes are the right size for the species. The barb makes a treated softer wood a better bet than a rock-hard one.


Digression about Cliff's plastic sleepers. in case anyone is keen to lay Standard Gauge track and wonders whether Cliff's will accommodate visiting narrow gauge and/or G-Scale.

There's a pleasant surprise in that - unlike most brands of standard gauge track - his Code 180 on 1:32 scale chairs will accommodate all but the most boorish G-Scale wheels! Counterintuitive, but it's because the true-scale chairs are so small that they miss the giant flanges.

Cliff offers gauge-widened sleepers for curves, and these are well worth having to reduce flange binding.

Cliff is keen on the benefits of stainless rail - which is lovely stuff except for:

= hard to work. Nah, you look big and strong :-)
Be sure to pre-curve the rails, even on wide radii - especially the ends, and especially if you imagine using the flimsy plastic fishplates. Otherwise the phrase 'dog-leg' will come back to haunt you after a couple of winters.

= looks horribly like stainless steel,
which Cliff can fix with an acid potion that rusts it ("stainless stains less", rather than not at all)

= very slippery.
which means that expansion and contraction with the seasons causes the rails to 'creep' through the chairs - just like full size: huge gaps can open up and crossings can be closed up, both causing derailments.

Fixing the track down is fun, because the sleepers are SO delicate. The tradional woodscrew through the middle of the occasional sleeper is a recipe for bending the sleepers U shaped, which narrows the gauge and pings stock up in the air. Screw through clearance holes at both ends, with a deliberate bit of up-and-down movement allowance, is much better.
I've no personal experience of loose ballasted Barker track, but a friend has done it - and with True Scale flanges only 1mm deep. I'd be very temped to use traditional battens under the sleepers, but then the problem of fixing down rears it's head again.

Either way you need a solid sub-base because the rail is only one third as stiff as traditional Code 250 rail, and because the tiny chairs don't have massive grip on the rail.

Switch and crossing work is eased by Cliff's ready-machined switch rails and cast crossings. The standards Cliff uses are suitable for the bulk of standard and narrow gauge wheels - but not all.
Depending on your flanges, you may have to grind the flangeways a bit. If you want fabricated crossings, be sure to solder it all down to a solid piece of sheet metal, unless you are installing inside a heated building. You cannot rely on the little plastic chairs to maintain the flangeway widths in the face of expanding and contracting metal rail.
Cliff's cast tie bars need treating with respect commensurate with their delicate appearance - or replacing with simpler, sturdier and cheaper ones.

A final thought - bullhead has a Right Way and a Wrong Way and is worth getting the right way up, if only to avoid being teased about it :-)

So: it's a quality product range that needs gentle handling and regular tweaking (rather than full-blooded maintenance), especially after winter. At least you shouldn't get degradation of the materials.

Here's his Products page:
http://www.cliffbarker.talktalk.net/gauge1products.htm

David

Thanks guys. That's very useful information.

Tuppenced, can I ask if you have used these components to build standard gauge track or narrow gauge? from your comments I'm guessing you have had some experience of turnout construction with them too.

I'm wondering if an option for 16mm might be to source more substantial material for sleepers and to set up a drilling rig. I'm sure the cost is more than proprietry flexi track but it's my opinion that the appearance of well constructed track far outweighs this and is worth all the effort.

Your comments have been very useful thanks.

Andrew

Andrew,

I haven't costed it out, but the crunch vs pre-assembled flextrack would be the price of chairs. Another alternative would be to use G1MRA whitemetal chairs which are spiked down to wooden sleepers.
[If you go this route, remember that mainline wooden wedged chairs come right-handed and left-handed as per full-size practice so you'll need equal quantities of each.]
One key reason for avoiding flextrack is that it gauge-tightens on curves whereas what we need is gauge-widening as per prototype - home-made sleepers allow this.

I haven't constructed any CB track myself, but after spending an afternoon shocked to see people putting trains back on a track - some of them almost every lap - I came back with tools and a friend and we spent another afternoon fixing it - not perfectly, but enough to be going on with - and wrote an illustrated report to help the custodians sort it out and keep it sorted.

The track was standard gauge CB flextrack (with gauge widening sleepers on curves) layout with CB-built Switch and Crossing work. Although basically sound, it was heading for useless after its first winter because its custodians, new to garden railways, had treated it as if it were indoor 00 Gauge. Indeed few of the problems would have happened had it been laid in a clubhouse.

My previous Message summarises the findings, but I can send you a suitably redacted copy of the document if you email me from this forum (using the button below this message).

David Halfpenny
Fellow of the Permanent Way Institution
and pompous with it :-)

Cliff Barker launched his new 32mm gauge narrow gauge track at the Peterborough show last Saturday. I've seen no mention of this anywhere which surprised me a bit. The track is based upon Penrhyn chairs and his code 180 bullhead rail. I think it looks like the doggies dangly bits - so much so that I took him up on his show price for ten lengths - and I've not even commenced the earthworks of the Soar Valley line yet!

The sleeper units are moulded in pairs of sleepers spaced at 32mm centres - 2'-0" in scale feet and a pretty good spacing for most narrow gauge railways. The gauge, I am told, is a fraction of a fraction over 32mm and a gauge widened version (at 32.6mm if I remember correctly) is following imminently. Cliff is also looking seriously at check chairs and possibly 'bridge' chairs for making up S&C units.

I'm planning to make up the track in 'two lengths per rail', i.e. each full length of rail supplied will be joined to it's neighbours by Cliffs excellent little fishplates but a second set will be used 'mid-length' to simulate something close to 30' lengths of track generally found on narrow gauge lines. I shall work out sleeper spacing to suit, prototypically reducing the spacing on two or three sleepers either side of the joint (done in 12" to the foot scale to give additional support to the rail ends).

For anyone with half an eye for good looking permanent way it's a range well worth a look.

Andrew