Rail height transition

With the switch machines in place I could turn back to track laying. I have so far only laid the code 70 track. The code 55 spurs remain to be done. But before I could begin that task I needed to fix the rail height transition. Since I do not use any rail joiners this was a simple matter of shimming the code 55 track so that the rail tops became aligned with those of the code 70 track.

I used the standard procedure applied when building super elevated curves - pieces of masking tape cut successively shorter and used to build up a smooth grade. In my case it turned out that four layers of tape was what it took. Here is a picture of some masking tape shims arranged in front of the existing code 70 track.

A this test fit of some tie strip with a piece of code 55 rail on top shows that the rail tops are aligned.