Making a curved track switch

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Busy hands, loading cars on the model railroad.

That ties up an important track on my railroad.

So it is time to add one more crossover
so my uphill trains can swing into the next loop sooner
and get out of the way of his important job.

While he is at this age, i keep the delicate rail cars stored out of his reach.

I keep a lot of flat cars and gondolas ready for his visits.

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There's two mainline tracks, but I would have to run almost an extra lap to get a train to a crossover to get from one main to the other.

And that extra lap puts a train in the way of all those little toy cars.

The only place to add a cross over is just this ltttle stretch of two parallel tracks.

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I have a whole box of no. 6 Atlas switches that were garage-saled
from a club layout that had converted to hand-laid rail 30 years ago.

So I can afford to modify an inexpensive item to fit my space.
I could buy a good factory-made curved switch, but I am too cheap.

I home-bent a used regular switch for the outside curve for a natural fit.

Laying a regular switch on the inside curve doesn't line up well.

A regular no. 6 has a straight side, and I 've already started to make this one into a curved switch.

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. . . . . . Saw cuts to separate the solid molded plastic strips under the rails.

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More cuts in the tail end, which makes it easy to bend here. then push on the ends of the ties with both hands to form a segmented curve. This method is best for a large radius, but I have gone as tight as 30 inches on the outside curve. Sometimes the metal jumpers hidden in the plastic frogs can break if they are bent too far, then I have to solder jumper wires on to get power through. So I usually don't cut the stringers between ties within an inch of the frog and near the rivets of the moving points.

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the curve between the main tracks isn't perfectly smooth to the eye, it has a few inches of straight segments,
but once a train covers that, it looks fairly smooth around the curve.