Unless the piano hinge is mounted above the top of the railhead, this
arrangement will not allow the bridge to open upward.
Ed Kozlowsky
"Marty.Thorin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Gentlemen and Ladies:
I am, as usual, a few days behind.
Mounting bridges so the rails line up is easy. Use a piano hinge on the
fixed end. (It does not matter which way the bridge hinges: up, down,
left, right.) On the other end mount a door hinge so the bridge is now
locked in place with the piano hinge on one side and the door hinge on
the other. Note how the door hinge locks the other end to the layout.
No movement up, down, left, right. Remove the pin. Now the bridge
opens and closes. Put the pin back in and lay your track with lots of
spikes where the bridge opens (both ends). Cut the rails. Remove the
hinge pin. Open and close the bridge. Put the pin back and be amazed
at how simple this is and how well it works.
I call the half-a-door-hinge that is not attached to the bridge,
the fixed half. I mount the fixed half so it forms a stop for the
bridge. Bridges that open up rest on this hinge when closed.
My father also altered the hinge pin. He either replaced it with a
bent rod so he had a handle to grab or drilled a hole by the top of the
pin and added a nail as a handle. Sometimes he ground the pin so it was
narrower when the handle pointed down. Once inserted, he would rotate
the handle to be flush with the bottom of the bridge. This further
locked the hinge in place.
My father's bridges were build a bit different. He used lengths of rail
rather than flex track or sectional track. He built the bridge and then
laid his ties. He used cut-to-length sections of rail and did not lay
across the gap. To the bottoms of the ends of the rails, he would
solder an inch and a half strip of 1/4 inch wide brass strip. This was
then folded down. He did this to both sides of the gap so they are a
pair for each rail. Then when his bridge closed, the two dangling brass
strips got squished and electrical contact was made. Very simple. It
worked great for DCC, micro-motors with micro-current draw, and huge,
hulking, vintage motors drawing five amps or more.
Thorin
__________________________________________________________
Re: Lift-up (Hinge-down?) bridge
Posted by: "Robert Nicholson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] shabbona_rr
Date: Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:49 pm ((PST))
I have uploaded 4 new files of the rail lock system I used for a drop
leaf section on my previous layout.
The original idea for this concept goes to the Cuyahoga S Gauge group
who used it for a portable layout.
However, they made perpendicular cuts in the rails, and trains still
"bumped" over them. I went one step further and cut the rails at an
angle as shown in the file photos, which made for smooth, quiet
operation.
The lock pins hold the rails in alignment, and also conduct track power
from the bridge to the approach sections on each side. When they are
pulled to open the bridge, the track circuit to the approach sections is
broken, and trains will automatically stop before reaching the open
section (if you make your approaches long enough!)
Bob Nicholson
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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