I was wondering if anyone has actually built and used Ian Rice’s movable trackage cassettes where he uses aluminum angle to make the board rigid as well as forming the track itself. He has described the idea in a couple of his books. I am thinking it is something that might become useful on my railroad for turning locomotives as well as staging. Any opinions? - Nevin
I’ve used a very similar cassette, but I just use flextrack instead of lining up the metal angles in gauge. Seemed easier and worked fine.
Jon
Being terminally lazy, I simply take a length of steel stud material and caulk an appropriate length of good old Atlas Code 100 flex into it, with the rail ends projecting about 1/4 inch on the end(s) that might be attached to the fixed plant. (My cassette dock is at the end of a staging yard lead.)
At present, my collection includes 762mm, 1067mm and 1435mm track lengths, some with built-in rerailers, some not. They are rigid enough to support themselves and the usual 1:80 scale trains when placed on shelf brackets for off-layout storage.
The nicest thing about steel studs is that if I find a need for another one, or one of oddball length for a specific purpose, construction time is on the order of five minutes (plus setup time for the caulk.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Clark County, NV, garage)