I have acquired a significant quantity of old, HO sectional track which no longer seems available. It is grey metal with black plastic ties. I like the appearance because it actually looks like steel. Does anyone know who made this track? What is it made of? Why is it no longer available?
I think what you have there is old steel track. It’s not as much of a headache to keep clean as brass but still requires a lot of maintenance. Steel track is still available but is not as good as nickle silver track. If you look closely at the bottom of the track there should be a manufacturer’s name. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Tyco track.
That’s exactly what it’s made of, steel. As a result, it will rust! The use of steel rail is one of the big no-no’s in model railroading! Your better off using old brass track than you are using steel, unless you like cleaning track on a weekly basis.
Life-Like and Bachmann still make it with roadbed. You can search for it on the Walthers site http://www.walthers.com/
Enjoy
Paul
For confirmation that the rail is steel, try a magnet. And report back. Please.
Ed
I agree that I have never heard much “good” about steel track. However it does have good uses. Cut a bunch of it to 39’ lengths for gondola loads or stacks of rail in the maintenance yard awaiting use. You can also bend and twist a few pieces for the scrap yard or scrap loads to simulate rail damaged when a train went astray. You could also use it for abandoned track, where you do not plan to run trains, but could have an old, delapidated car or two that are perminantly “out of service.”
Just a couple of ideas.
Have fun,
Hmm… That’s interesting ( I’m serious)… What does real, steel, rail look like?
My point is that rail appears in loads of colours. Brand new from the mill tends to be black or at least a very dark gun metal grey… but that lasts no time at all. Most new rail very soon begins to brown as the iron content oxidises at the surface.
The only photos I’ve taken of any track parts that were actually specifically mid grey were some cast steel base plates that were so new from the foundry that they were almost still warm.
I have hundreds of pics of rail both in use and ready to be used or removed - the whole gamut. I even have the stuff in use as fence posts for more than a century (the type of rail has been out of use for at least that long). The most common colours would be dull mid brown to extremely dark chocolate brown (high cocoa content)… with a polished head and gauge corner where the rail is in regular/frequent use.
I have never seen a model rail that looked correct without having been worked on by the modeller. Only Nickel Silver is capable of something like the right polished affect of a well used rail head. Micro Engineering do both straight NS and “weathered” NS rail that is a pretty good start. I use the former for main track and dirty the sides and the latter for everything else.
YEUK! Except for newly replaced track that has all new ties straight from the treatment plant… or occasional replacement ties in among the rest. Broadly speaking ties are far more commonly grey or even silver. Brown ties tend to be the much more pale browns; more like very milky coffee than the dark browns most suppliers make. I think that most suppliers work on the children’s concept that the trunks of t
I’m pretty sure that what he has is steel rail that has a zinc coating for conductivity. This didn’t really improve it much though as history has borne out.The zinc oxidizes almost as fast as the steel it covers making a non-conductive coating that has to be cleaned off. Eventually the zinc will wear through and the steel will be exposed, showing through as rust spots.
I found some of that recently at a yard sale and my wheels started spinning. Not thinking it would be very good to use on the layout for several reasons one being no where near as good as nickle silver but it was code100 not code 83 but I had been wanting to add some details to one highly visible section of the club layout so I bought the steel track and stripped off all the ties. I then sued Sophisticated Finishes rust coating a fine I can thanks Dr. Wayne for turning me onto. I rusted up the rails and they turned out looking fantastic way too much rust to be used as weathering on actual track work but on discarded old rails laying on the side of the right of way with old worn out ties they added a great detail to the scene