First bulge in track but ready fix to it.

It has been quite hot here in south Texas and I hadn’t got out to my train shed in several months. Today I found a small bulge in one track where I thought I had left enough gap leading into a curve. Took my Dremel tool with a carbide disk and gapped it at the unsoldered rail joiner. It was just enough for the track to lie flat again. Quick fix this time but hope it is the last of this type of problem.

Probably as much humidity as heat, knowing Texas. But the cure is the same, what you did. Now that section has been “relieved” it should be OK. Might find another place or two before summer’s over. This is not unusual with new construction in climates like yours. Don’t know if A/C is an option for you or already in use, but it helps with this.

I had a similar problem recently with a 20 year old section of track. Been doing some landscaping to deal with a couple of small leaks when it pours. Then we had a goose-drowner as we call them here in the Midwest and ended up with a puddle. Got it all up, but an ops session a week later found things kept derailing in a tunnel. Further investigation revealed an insulated joint had popped, easy fix once found.

Landscaping now complete. We’ve had 2" since 5am and only the beginnings of a trickle showed up in the basement. Problem solved.

If the track buckles anywhere over a wooden frame, the problem isn’t too much moisture but a paucity of it. What happens is the wood grains shrink as moisture levels drop and the cells give up water content. This causes shrinkage across the grain. However, the metal rails and plastic ties on our scale tracks are not affected by moisture, only by temperature (more on that impact in a second…). While we may have left reasonably generous gaps here and there, hopefully remembering to leave the joiners unsoldered at those closable gaps, if the wood below them dries out enough, the rail ends will be brought so tightly together that something else has to give, and that means the rails get driven into a “wow.”

On another forum maybe ten years ago, a materials engineer posted that nickel-silver scale rails of the Code 100 size will only expand over their length by 1/4" with a temperature rise of 30 degrees Farenheit…I think it was F and not C. Fine, but over what length of contiguous Code 100 would that be? He stated that the 1/4" expansion was over a whopping 100’!

Therefore, your gaps are not for expanding and contracting rails nearly so much as they are to take account of seasonal humidity levels in the wood supporting your rails and comprising the rest of your bench. When the wood swells in higher humidity, and that would normally take at least two or three full days for it to show, the gaps widen and you get noisy transitions over them with metal wheelsets. When the gaps close because the wood is shrinking and drawing the roadbed with it, the rails have to give somewhere and they kink, lift, or make a big bow someplace.

selector,

Nothing wrong with your explanation, but may I humbly suggest that climate plays a huge role here. Texas is hot and humid. Observations since Sunday indicate a low relative humidity of 47%, with the highest being 96% in Brownsville, Texas. Many are in the 85%+ range. Not sure if that’s near the OP, Texas is a big state, but this is a good link to find out more: http://www.intellicast.com/Local/Observation.aspx?chart=Relative%20Humidity

Punch in Brownsville, Texas if it doesn’t take you there for past observations I used for example.

True, if the layout was built of wet wood, it might be shrinking. But most wood sitting around in south Texas, while technically dry, is going to be rather higher moisture content than in a lot of places. It’s possible the layout was built in the winter, when wood might well be drier, even in Texas, but if the wood is unsealed, several months of absorbing humidity in the Texas summer will make it rather moisture-laden at this point.

My only concern here is that the OP not “add water” as that’s not going to help.

Um… Hate to point this out, but high moisture content, via high humidity, would expand gaps, not shrink them…

Did something else get “bumped”?

Had my layout for quite a while without any issues. Being on the Wet coast our humidity levels don’t have drastic changes through the year. However when we got the new high efficiency furnce installed the contractor said that some people get a humidifier installed after the fact as the new high efficiency furnaces really drop the humidity in the house. You guessed it, a few months later a couple of speed bumps showed up. Easily fixed and I have never had another since.

Oh yeah, the microclimate can def2initely bring about changes inside a house. Some years ago, we had a leak at the wife’s house. It was the flashing around the chimneyFixed it, no further problems.

Back in 09 or whenever the last year they offered the tax credit for investing in high efficiency furnaces and A/C here in the States, we had central air put in with the new furnace.

Our first tenant after we converted it to a rental was an officemate of the wife’s. Standard for him to run the A/C when it’s summer in the Midwest, with high humidity, especially at night when you’d otherwise open the windows and let the cool air in. He moved out.

New tenant is a European woman who took a job here at the Big U. And we get the torrential rains this spring and into summer. From the usual directions, West to Northwest. Except one hard one from the South.

Tenant calls to say her wall is wet. The exact same place as years ago. So I’m pretty sure it’s the chimney flashing again and confirm by getting into the attic. It trickles down the chimney itself, rather than dripping. Roofing people are way backed up and it’s still raining, but fortunately from the usual directions, so nothing gets worse, I just have to explain how backed up all the local roofers are.

The point here? The basement is one of those former dirt ones they do around here. They start out as a root cellar, then keep digging. A shelf about 4’ wide is left at the outer edges to support the foundation, with a half-wall at the edge of the full depth basement in the middle. The whole thing is covered in concrete. With local soil conditions, it tends to be rather damp in the basements and this one was no different – until we got central air. That dried the basement out, causing the chimney’s foundation to drop also. That reopened the previously repaired gap at the flashing 30+ feet above as the floor of the basement dropped as it dried.

So indoors we do have some control over the c

I was just surprised as this was not a new installation. It has been almost two years since track was laid. Last summer was another draught summer with heat that should have dried out gridwork. This was the only area in 58’ double mainline that had a bulge. The rest of the track is just fine.