Tapiola Parish Model Railway Club

FREMO interface

Kauniainen was intended to be a double track mainline that would feed a single track line. The interface to single track was decided to be FREMO. The end profile was printed 1:1 and lighly glued to a plywood and cut according to drawing.

To make sure the end profile would withstand the stress from FREMO modules bolted to the end profile it was equipped with "fins" that went into the foam, thus the forces tearing the interface board would not stress the glue so that it would "peel off". This idea is copied from the Chech FREMO group http://www.zababov.cz/H0e/moduly/991/photo/photo991.htm (narrow-gauge FREMO-module). The whole Zababov-site: http://www.zababov.cz

After assembly the paper was removed. It turned out that the drawing wasn't drawn accurately and the holes need to be adjusted.

The FREMO interface was designed to be 1290mm from the floor in case the Kauniainen layout would not be levelled up. This way it was intended that the variations of the flooring could always be compensated by rising Kauniainen, as our Bauhaus sawhorses could not be adjusted down. Thus the FREMOinterface was 1300 +nn mm / - 10mm.

During tracklaying the level shift from Kauniainen's 1300mm nominal rail height to FREMO interfaces 1290mm (to give possibility to go 1300 -10 mm) the track should have a slight level change. Looking at this picture it seems that the level shift has been closer to Kauniainen station,and not as gradual as originally intended.

As it seemed that the finnish FREMO group usually levels the layout by just measuring the height from the end of the module to the floor, it seemed pointless to allow for feight compensation, as we always had to lift Kauniainen 1 cm to match, so the profile board was removed...

The end profile was very hard to remove! In fact we had to use hack saw blade to cut through the glue. You may also notice that the PVA glue held the plywood "fins" to end profile better than the glue between plywood's plys.

The plywood trackbase was constructed from small pieces of 9mm plywood and it will be glued in place at correct level, and track then spiked on.

...and the cork track base was torn away and replaced with plywood. As the base will be glued down I also installed a small splice block so that when we start with the turntable we can also use plywood as roadbed there also. Should one provide for the cork between plywood and track?

Looking at the way the FREMO interface was so tightly fitted one could re-think about the plywood box around the module. What if the sides were of 3mm (1/8 in) plywood replacing the hardboard profile boards, and only the horizontal strip at the bottom would be of 9 mm (3/8 in) plywood? That way we would not have to cut the modules narrower, but would still have the solid bottom edge, and by fitting the ends with triangular "fins" we could fit 9mm (3/8in) end panels to old Kauniainen modules to make the modules stackable for transportation like we had with the old layout...