I am striving to make mine such. How many of us, though, have perfect trackwork? I have a suspicion that many of our frequent fliers on these boards have such track. But, how many others out there who would like to rip it up and lay it down again without errors?
My trackwork is not perfect. It has been operating now for about three years. I can tell that the pizza cutter MT flanges do better on my track than the low profile MT. But, the low profile wheels do not do that badly, for me. I feel that I could do the trackwork better if I did it over, but I doubt that I ever will. If I do have to replace it, I will certainly do a better job, next time.
Perfect--'Tis a consumation devoutly to be wished! With 800 feet of track and 80 switches, and more switches (crossovers) to come, I'm not about to rip up anything above the minimum to fix problems. I do not build for the ages--most of my benchwork is foam board or double layers of foam core. But the track's pretty good. I rarely have trouble with track. Most of my troubles are with out of gauge wheels or coupler pins dragging. I do have a system for isolating problems. When I have a derailment, I put a piece of blue painter's tape at the location, and also above the truck that I think caused the problem. Over time, I'm able to determine whether it's the location or a specific car/car combination. I mention car combination because I'd guess that it's a coupling that causes problems about half the time (WAG). Since we're still scenicking, some problems are caused by tools left on the track or gobs of ballast--completely avoidable in the future. Atlas C55 and low-profile wheels so far have worked, except that I've clotheslined a number of trains. I'd guess that 80% of those incidents have been either a sagging trip pin or a dropped kingpin. The Atlas C55 switches give me a problem only when I lay them wrong--usually there's a flex, either vertically or horizontally, when something goes wrong. But there are still too many pieces of blue tape at locations around the railroad.
I don't have perfect track work, but I have hardly any derailments. When I look at certain sections of track, I think about replacing it, but I've seen many Class 1 railroads with worst track than mine. I have all Atlas low profile wheels on my cars and they run excellent. I figure if it works well, don't fix it, because my luck it will not work when I get it back together after trying to fix it.
Mark: No model trackwork can be perfect.. One strives for perfection to the best of one's ability. I switched from MT pizza cutters wheel sets to low profile metal wheel sets and all is running well. My trackwork is not perfect, but I've been very lucky and can run a session for hours without a derailment. There are minor imperfections in all trackwork that is laid, the idea is to minimize the "imperfections". Stay cool and run steam.....
I'll attest to that! In high school, our baseball field was about 3 miles by road, with lots of stop signs and stoplights, from the school, but less than 2 miles by the B&A mainline. We had a choice: wait for the bus (which was always late), or run the 2 miles down the track. About six of us ran the track every day, and always beat the bus. Man, that main line was squiggly! If there were such a thing as a prototype track gauge, that stretch would have failed. Yes, there is such a thing, but in New England, you'd have to apply it every day. It was great conditioning for track and basketball.
I was so cool Sunday when the Bay Area Z Scale Modular Group arrived to connect our modules. I had half my track laid, and ballasted no less. We had to setup on the patio because of space issues, and after a few hours in the sun, the guys said, WOW! Look at your Track! It was warped and mangled. My handlaid switch looked like a Krazy Straw all mangled and twisted. My Cool became Fool, because I forgot to cut expansion slots. Never needed them before, but now I know.
In all of my years pursuing this hobby, it never has been. But each time I build something, it does improve. Practice may not make perfect. But it helps a lot! Boxcab E50
pray59, A long, long time ago on a Yahoo group, and then later on the Atlas forum, a bunch of us calculated the expansion of nickel-silver rail from about 50 degrees F. to exposure under full sunlight, which could have the rails up to approx. 180 degrees F. I think we chose a 50 degree F. differential--from 50 degrees F. to 100 degrees F. Over a five foot length of track, the expansion caused a 3/8" displacement. Since I don't have the coefficient any more, all I remember is that it is a cosine function, and it's pretty accurate. Here's a shot from my railroad a few years ago. The red line is the bridge deck. The vertical kinkage was almost exactly predicted:
And here's some squiqqly track for you: I swear this track is straight! Everytime I look at it, it's straight. But when you compress about 20 feet of track with a telephoto, it gets squiqqly.
I did that on sunday last weekend as in the other thread... I would also add here I think lines that are 100% dead straight are boring! To have the train kink a bit adds to it! But.. what is perfect? joins, levels, radius, rises, ballast, wiring, theres so many variables, and things to get right. [ 15. October 2004, 00:56: Message edited by: virtual-bird ]
Is squiqqly a legit Scrabble word? You expect an English major to remember this kind of stuff for more than a nanosecond? You expect this Forum to enable me to express math equations? Anyway, you take the track length at 100 degree F, and divide it by the track length at 50 degrees F, using the coefficient of expansion for nickel-silver to find the difference. It is a very small fraction above 1.00. If you take the cosine of that you should have the displacement, as the vertical leg of a triangle. Now the displacement may be in any vector . . . How's that for an English major--probably all wet!!!!
Is squiqqly a legit Scrabble word? </font>[/QUOTE]We should play scrabble one night, I had a good word one night after a few brews, "SHEDLET" a small railway shed...they didnt believe me.
"Quiz_ical" across two triple word scores, with the "Z" on a triple letter score. Or was it "Qui_zical?" A zillion points.
A week ago, I had to cut out and replace a chunk of track on one of my modules on Wednesday evening, so the glue would set enough that I could load the module in my car that Thursday evening, for display at a train show last Friday. There's nothing like preparing well in advance...
My mainline is pretty trouble free - but every once in a while a finicky car or locomotive will find a spot that needs tweeking. It seems like a MT 89' flat or Kato SD40 (from the latest run with the lower profile wheels) are the best at finding the tiniest flaws. . . . so I fix them and keep runnin'. Never thought about tearing it all up, though - for the most part it's pretty reliable. I think the key is to run ALOT before you scenic - find and fix all the flaws before it gets hard to fix them w/ scenery and ballast down.
I remember many times laying track and using the old nails to "anchor" the track in place. I'm really amazed that anything ran as most of the time it looked as if I was nailing down to China. The track was out of gauge but the track was definitely going to stay put! In my most recent layout I am using fiberboard on top of foam and laying the Atlas code 55 on the Woodland Scenics foam roadbed. The best method that I have found for putting the track where you want it and keeping it there is to dilute the Woodlands Scenics foam tack glue to 6 parts water 4 parts glue. I then bead a line down the center of the roadbed (applied with white glue or full strength WS). I lay the track, tack it in place and weight it with my many kato locos in their plastic boxes. I don't use the white glue anymore for the trackwork as the Woodland Scenics glue has some flex to it after drying so if you need to change something all you need to do is mist it with water and it comes right up and the track doesn't lose its flexibility either. Dave has a great point about running your trains a lot before you scenic so that you can fix those trouble spots before applying the ballast and scenery. I waited almost 2 years but then I love running the trains - you just have to imagine all that creative scenery work that you will have plenty of time to tackle after you are happy with your trackplan and your tracklaying. Ripping it up after the scenery is applied isn't pretty and unfortunately not much can be slavedged either. Brian
Even the prototype has track issues. Take a look at the following Adobe .PDF file: http://www.boche.net/trains/%2314%20Disturbed%20Track.pdf
