Hi, just wondering what are anyone’s thoughts on mixing brass track with nickle silver track track? i have a lot of brass track and turnouts and would like to be able to use it up but have been on the fence awhile now about it? should i even bother ,i could save a lot of money?
As long as you can get good alignment at the flange faces and the tops of the heads of the rails where they meet so that you get no bucking or dipping, or picked flanges, and as long as you can get continuty from section to section, sure, why not? The issue for most is the maintenance for brass because it oxidizes, but if you can control it by daily use, I would say use it until you can match it all up with nickel silver over time.
Crandell
If you are building a small layout, the brass track should be OK. However, if you are going to be building something larger than a 5 by 12 table layout, I wouldn’t use it. It oxidizes easily and has to be cleaned often.
Two places to use brass rail:
- At the far end of spur tracks where locomotives will never tread.
- The busiest mainline tracks, where traffic will keep it clean.
Brass was the standard for several decades, and when nickle silver came along the main selling point was that nickle silver looked more like steel. Not until later was it noticed that nickle silver needed cleaning less often. Now, nickle silveer is the preferred material for new construction - but there are more than a few layouts, originally built with brass rail, that are still in operation and still operating adequately.
I personally used up most of my limited stock of brass at the marker ends of back-in staging tracks. Small pieces have been incorporated as guard rails in hand-laid specialwork. A limited quantity is reserved for use as scenery - to represent the continuous welded rail that will replace existing jointed rail as part of my (purely cosmetic) mainline rebuilding and upgrading process. The concrete ties are (mostly) in place (Atlas Code 83 flex) but the new rail won’t be installed until the first weekend in October, 1964. Since my layout is caught in a time warp (at midnight on 30 September, 1964, it resets to 00:01 AM 1 September, 1964) that rail will still be stretched along the right of way awaiting installation when my executor has to decide what to do with the layout.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Thanks, nickel it will be and for the brass, out to the road for the recyclers. Again that’s why i like this Fourm[:D]
If you have a large quantity, take it to the scrap metal recyclers yourself. You may be surprised at the price per pound for scrap.
I wouldn’t mix the two, nor would I use brass track, even if it saved me some money from buying new NS track.
I would not go brass OR steel track.
I would stick with NS track for better operations and lower maintenance issues.
Just my [2c] worth.