G scale Re-Railer

thingiverse

This is a re-railer for G scale model railways such as LGB, Bachmann etc. I found that some cheap Chinese Nuquida coach copies were derailing on some of my inverse curves, so made this to try and get them back on track. It uses four screws to hold and align the track. The screws I used were 3.5mm by 16, and these extend just below the re-railer bottom surface. I have attached the 123D file so you can modify the design if your railway does not use LGB locos. Print Settings Printer: Shapeoko Rafts: No Resolution: 0.2 layers, 0.4 nozzle Infill: 20% Notes: This proved very testing to print. It may be my new extruder, but at 0.15mm layers I had a lot of prints where the head clogged at 0.9mm height. I sorted this, and then had two prints where the print bed dislodged (and jammed the print head) at exactly the same 16.6mm print height. Making sure my filament feed was near perfect and improving the bed location and fixing seem to have solved the issues, but be warned! How I Designed This background This is actually the ninth iteration of my design. Some points learnt during the design are: It would be helpful to have a guide on the outside of the wheels, but the LGB pickups on the engines extend over the rail head by about 2mm. and above the rail by about the same. Some LGB engines, notably the Stanz, have parts of their running gear that then extend down to only 3mm or so above the track, so even though a cantilevered guide is just possible, (but difficult to print) it does scrape on the engine as it passes. The standard back to back distance for G scale wheels is about 40mm, with 6mm wheels (including the flanges). The inner dimension of the re-railer must accommodate this, but the LGB track cleaner I have has a back to back of about 38mm. This may be a fault introduced when the cleaning wheels were replaced, but the re-railer has been designed to allow these cleaning wheels through without binding. The centre diamond is about 2mm above the rails. This helps align the wheels as they re-rail, higher would be better, but it would then foul on other "low parts" of the LGB locomootives. I have attached the 123D file so you can modify the design if your railway does not use LGB locos.