Baseboard Joints
Everyone who’s ever built a sectional or modular model railway layout knows not to rely on pins or glue to hold the track down at the baseboard edges, as it’ll tear or break eventually.
With my new modular layout, and Erik’s sectional layout, we face this very same challenge, and I’m not that enamoured of the traditional solutions of soldering to brass screws or big bits of printed circuit board, as they look ugly!
Fellow local modeller Brian Daly recommended the Gapmaster by The American Tie & Timber Company which is a milled set of PCB sleepers – ties in EN_US – to replace a few of those fitted to the track.
The design purpose of the Gapmaster is to allow electrical sections to be created without having to resort to the ugly and oversize plastic rail joiners.
They look like the sleepers they’re replacing, but the rails are soldered to the copper film on the top, giving very positive location. You then saw through the rail, together with the copper film, to create an electrical separation but maintain a mechanical connection.
Instead, I intend to glue these at the baseboard edges, then solder the ends of the track to them, giving permanent accurate alignment across the baseboard when they are all joined together. That’s the theory anyway!
I’ve got some of their GM006 on order for my layout and their GM007 for Erik’s layout. They should already be winging their way from California.
The four-tie version of their GM007 should make a much more resilient join that will survive childish attempts to connect the boards.
It remains to be seen if I’ll need to use two of the GM006 at each baseboard edge for additional security. Wayne Perrier of The American Tie & Timber Company says not. However, at $2.50 each, it’s cheaper than having to replace whole lengths of ripped up track instead.
More news as soon as the parcel arrives and the bits have been installed.