How easy is it ?

I have been reading the Cobalt installation guide with regards to fitting Cobalt motors to points. They give you details on how to make your track work look more realistic by cutting away some of the sleepers and trimming down the point bar locator sleeper.

It does look good when done. I think you are meant to replace the cut away sections with copper clad sleepers. My question is, how easyisitto do this and do you lose any of the integrity from the point when doing it?

If you install copper clad sleepers, how do you stop them from creating a short ? Maybe I've not read this properly but any advice would be good as I've bought about 2 dozen sets of points and Cobalts which I hope to be adapting soon.

Cheers

Toto

I haven't seen the Cobalt guide - how about posting a link so others can see?  

Adding copper clad to reinforce plastic points is not a bad idea.  Make sure you maintain the gauge.  Since the rail is nickel silver, soldering is easy and you can use electrical solder with rosin flux that is non corrosive.  Just make sure the base of the rail and copper are clean.  Simply use your Dremel with cutting disk to gently remove copper from the middle of the timber to prevent shorts (a Norman Solomon tip).  If you cut a groove in the timber, you weaken it because the groove becomes a "stress raiser".

I hope you adhere to the best practise of making your points DCC friendly.  This will have been posted before and there will be threads in the index:  http://www.wiringfordcc.com/

John

The Cobalt Guide

Point/turnouts for DC or DCC conversion
http://www.mrol.com.au/Articles/Electrical/LiveFrogWiring.aspx

A lot of good stuff in that guide Sol, I have saved it.

Thinking about it, I believe the closure rail/blade hinge is likely to be an electrical weak spot - if not now, then later.  To be proactive it would be a good idea to solder an omega loop across the hinge to preclude problems later.  Once ballasted and painted solder repairs to points are more difficult to do.


John