NRM Article - Fitting a Point Motor

[edwardholmes91]

How to fit a point motor:

This is the way that I have found to work best for fitting point motors, this is what works best for me, I am not saying it will work just as well for you, therefore I accept NO responcibility for any damage that may be caused to yourself, someone else or your layout by following the instructions below.

Just to avoid any confusion, my baseboard is 12mm MDF and 4mm fine sanded cork tiles, the following method replies on this kind of baseboard, however you are quite welcome to adapt the idea to suit your layout board.

So here goes:

Firstly, mark where the sliding bar mechanism goes:



Then remove the point and any surrounding trackwork, marking either side of the rails in 2 or more places, draw two lines, down the centre of your marks, it should look like this:



You should now have two points at which the lines cross, drill this with about a 3mm piolet hole:



It should look like this when they are drilled:



Now drill the hole out bigger, using a 22mm flat chisel drill bit, to make an "8" shaped hole:



Now clean up the sawdust, otherwise it may get in the point mechanism or motor and cause it to fail:



Once you have done this, cut hole out using jigsaw:



The hole should now look like this:



Cut a piece of spare cork to 33 by 50mm:



Place the piece ontop of the hole, centre it and draw round it:



Cut round the marked out box with a craft knife or similar:



Chisel out the cork so that you are left with a lip all the way around the hole:



Once you have cleaned the hole, it should look like this, dont press on to hard otherwise you will remove some of the MDF and it will spoil the final finish:



Place into the hole to check that it fits properly, you can always cut the cork a little smaller, or the hole a bit bigger, then remark the line which you drew to start off with:



Now you can drill some holes in the centre of the cork cutout using the small 3mm piolet drill, if you like you can use a knife or the chisel to make the slot nice and crisp:



Hold the point motor up to the piece of cork and mark out the metal spikes, it is important that you get this bit right:



Drill four holes where you have marked the point motor, using the 3mm piolet drill, and posistion in hole:



Now align the point motor to the cork, push through the holes and line the point up to the motor lugs, check this it operates properly and offer up to hole, you must ensure that the central pin is pushed into the holes in the sliding bar mechanism of the point:



Finally push into posistion making sure that the cork sits flush, wire it up, test it, if all works well, pin the surrounding track down and the point:



Wola, there you have it!

[surf1845]

This is a very informative and well laid out article. Photos are excellent too.

[edwardholmes91]

This is a very informative and well laid out article. Photos are excellent too.

Thank you for the most kind comments, it is greatly appreciated.

This is the first article that I have written, however funny as it seems, it wasn't actually intended for an article until Raider asked me to add it to this section

Once again thank you for the kind comments, my best of luck go to you and anyone else who may wish to follow my article.

[noel]

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"Now align the point motor to the cork, push through the holes and line the point up to the motor lugs,
check this it operates properly and offer up to hole, you must ensure that the central pin is pushed into
the holes in the sliding bar mechanism of the point:"

You don't say how you anchor the motor to stop it from falling out -
do you take the lugs through to the top of the point and put a twist
on them there?

It doesn't look like that in the last picture,
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