Model Railway Forum

I learned the hard way! I got a track pin pusher, but it’s difficult to control. I ended-up driving the pins fully in whilst not meaning to. This bit me later when I identified two duff Hornby R8073 points. Luckily, I had only (and deliberately) only lightly pinned the track using just one or two pins per track section, and a kitchen pallet knife, slid under the track, gently levered, managed to release the offending pins. One or two sleepers got a little mangled in the process, not fatally so, and if/when I get round to ballasting then hopefully my foolishness will be reasonably well disguised.

Thanks for the heads-up on the screws!

Track pins are dead easy to remove with wire cutters. Just lever them out.

I also push the pins in with the same cutters.

You need Gaugemaster pins. Very sharp.

Buffer Stop wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 12:23 am I learned the hard way! I got a track pin pusher, but it’s difficult to control. I ended-up driving the pins fully in whilst not meaning to.

My first experience of laying track many, many years ago I was advised not to hammer the pins in, but use a pin pusher instead. I got one that had a spring so strong it would sometimes ember the sleepers in the base-board!

I now use a small hammer.

I see a potential downside to using track pin screws, as suggested previously: rounding the head off a tiny screw would make it a lot more difficult to remove, if necessary. I'm sufficiently cack-handed to guarantee that that would happen to me!

I have the replacement R8073 points, and in testing (I've yet to pin the bits of track down around them again, all seems good. Time will tell. My local model shop guy said that at face value, he couldn't see anything wrong with the points, but then went on to say that he'd had to return a number of points to Hornby because of QC issues. The new points have a slightly different feel to them when manually operated, but that could all just be my imagination!

I have found that it's not necessary to use many track pins per section of track. One or two, in a section of four, for example, seems to be fine. I'm not planning on using any pins on the points. I think it better to leave them unpinned. They don't seem to move, and I can see scope to damage a point if it needs to be lifted. That said, track pin screws might be a better bet for points.

I've just ordered 50 x 6mm, 50 x 8mm, 50 x 100mm (which are standard track pin length) screws and a 14mm screwdriver. I think that I'll carry on using track pins for track sections and the screws, if needed, for points and other tricky fixings such as points motors.

I prefer screws rather than track pins. They're much easier to remove if you wish to change the layout and haven't done ballasting etc. (I prefer to experiment with different track plans on the board.)

I find the 6mm too short and the 10mm too long for most locations. Drilling a hole before screwing in (with a simple hand Archimedes drill) works well so that not much force is needed to screw them in.

It's all one big learning curve for me! My local model shop guy recommends using track pins but leaving the heads slightly proud to make removal easy. That's what I was trying to do, but failed abysmally. I'm annoyed that I've slightly mangled a couple of track section sleepers but actually, one of the point problems caused me to re-examine a particular siding layout and make some changes which actually makes things a bit better, so it wasn't all bad.

I'm surprised just how long things seem to take. I want to get on with doing stuff like building stations and so forth, and actually getting some models whizzing round the track, but there's so much infrastructure work that I need to do first -- wire the isolating tracks, sort-out wiring the points motors, then there's signalling, building a small platform for all the controls and so forth. There's not enough time in the day, and life keeps getting in the way. I can see now why it takes Network Rail to do anything in the real world!

Buy some Gaugemaster track pins. They have a nice thin flat head and are extremely sharp. Can be pushed into baseboard with the end of some pliers. No need for a hammer or a pin pusher. I have used them for over 30 years and have never damaged a piece of track fitting or removing them.


See Brians link below.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Fri Aug 20, 2021 12:49 pm Buy some Gaugemaster track pins. They have a nice thin flat head and are extremely sharp. Can be pushed into baseboard with the end of some pliers. No need for a hammer or a pin pusher. I have used them for over 30 years and have never damaged a piece of track fitting or removing them.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peco-SL-14-Tra ... LR4E&psc=1

HI Brian (WTD)
Your link is to Peco SL14 pins. Gaugemaster pins are GM66 here... https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magen ... -gm66.html or here on Amazon... https://www.amazon.co.uk/GM66-Hornby-Tr ... 243&sr=8-1

Thanks Brian. What an idiot. Me not you.