Reply To: Well confused newcomer!

[David ThompsonParticipant]

@John Cutler said:
My advice would be to build a short piece of plain track using ply sleepers, C&L chairs and EMGS rail.
Butanone may not join ply with plastic chairs as strongly as plastic to plastic but an eminent EMGS member (Douglas Smith?) tested such joints to destruction and concluded that for our purposes they were not much different in strength.
One advantage of ply sleepers is that you can pre-colour them with ink or dye before assembly, as recommended by Ian Rice. Another, I find, is that if one hashes the alignment, it is possible to insert a sharp blade betwixt chair and ply and break the Butanone bond fairly cleanly to move/remove the chair (yes, you can conclude I bodge my track-laying!).
Do not underestimate the hassle in colouring the trackwork; use the test piece to discover what you need to do.

I also suggest you try Exactoscale chairs as well as C&L.The range is different with more railway company variations.

I recommend you buy “An Approach to Building Finescale Track in 4mm” by Iain Rice (Wild Swan).
Although it is dated, most of the content is still relevant.

Good Luck!
John C  

Hi John, I was planning to do just that – I’ll take a look at the Exactoscale chairs but all I need are GWR 2-bolt. If 2-bolt chairs were available on ready made track I’d probably be using that. For track colouring we recently used an air-brush on a Club OO layout and it worked really well and very quick, We were able to create a fine, narrow spray which covered the rail and chairs but left the sleepers and ballast alone so I plan on experimenting with that as well
Thanks
David