If you have matte medium holding ballast in place, most important is a way to loosen it. The spray bottle contains 90%+ alcohol. Misted on, it causes the old matte medium to break down and be easily dealt with.
From the left, two plastic lids, one to hold salvaged track material and one to handle the clumpy loosened ballast, scenic materials, etc you’ll scrape up. The angled needle nose pliers are very handy for extracting stuff that is difficlut. The orange-handled Xuron flush cutting track cutters make easy work of destruction. The blue-handled Xuron spike driving pliers have seen better days, but still make it easy to pull spikes, as well as set them. Behind is the all-important putty knife and the alcohol ready to spray.
Salvaged track material? Yep, might as well save the good spikes, rail joiners, etc.
Why, it even comes pre-weathered[swg]
Sometimes it’s easier to leave a building in place. Protect them before you start spraying alcohol. Throwing some old newspapers over them usually works.
This sequence applies if you’ve soiked your track down. If you used track nails, ALL will need to be pulled or you’ll likely damage the track. If you used caulk or other adhesive, it may come up OK or may stick too tightly. Using spikes with flex track makes for eacy modifiction, so it’s one reason I do it like this.
After letting things soak in the alcohol mist for a couple of minutes, the ballast softens. Sometimes I use the tip of a pocket knife blade to pry up the track enough to slide the putty knife under it. With spikes, you don’t need to get them all out when spiked through cork – only the tip is into the wood.
Gentle does it and the track will soon pry up working from one end to the other by sliding the putty knife along. One reason for not destroying the track here is that it’s already wired, so I can just rebend and shorten it if I’m lucky. I also hoped that I could preserve use of the existing bridge over Cement Creek. Turned out wrong, I need to make a more aggressive relocation to get a smooth curve.
With the Sculptamold next to the existing ROW moist from the 90%, I slid the putty knife blade under the track to shave off the adjacent ground to get a level trackbed for what hung over onto it after the curve was relocated.
The track was formed, the loose end trimmed to fit, and I installed rail joiners as needed, insulated and non-insulated.
Looks can be deceiving, as it looked pretty good, but it went down to about 17" radius in one spot. Eventually, I took the other end loose and recurved it again, using the smidge of extra gained to get tyhe curve back to 18"
