reusing old flex track rail in hand-laid track

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

i’m wondering about potential problems reusing some old code 83 nickle-silver flex track rail on several feet of a hand laid mine spur. I’m using new rail on the mainline and switches.

The rail has kinks which i assume i can straighten sufficiently when i spike the rail.

The top will also need to be cleaned which i also assume should not be a problem once it’s laid.

anyone have any experience using previously used rail when hand laying track?

what other problems might there be?

thanks greg

2

If the rail is merely kinked a bit and sinuous, but not torsioned overmuch (meaning rotated around its long axis so that the tire surface on the head is canted when the rail is sort of laid flat), and if it is clean enough to solder to where it must be, sure…why not?

You can straighten rails by pressing it carefully against a straightedge, but also by gentle over-bending at stubborn kinks. You’ll never get it looking like the hour it came out of the dies, but if it can lay flat so that the flanges work along the railheads, and if you can retain it in place in the correct configurations, by all mean harvest and re-use salvaged rails.

Crandell

3

Embrace the kinks, and lay the spur as bad track. I love the look of kinked rail sunk into the mud and weeds, but then I grew up along the Penn Central in northern Indiana…

You shouldn’t have much problem if the rail is kinked left/right or up/down; what you don’t want is a kink in both axes at the same time, or a rotational fault anywhere. Lay one rail at a time, and when you come through with the second, have several 3 point gages in use.

4

Back in the day, Atlas offered their rail and fiber tie strip separately which was basically the same stuff as their flex track. There should not be any problems with reuse but, while I am as fond as anybody at well modeled irregular track, I’d be leary of actual kinks and I am not sure just bullying the kinks into place with track spikes is the best idea.

The only caution would be about Peco track, at least some of which uses a special rail section intended to imbed into the plastic ties.

Dave Nelson

5

i was wondering if kinks wouldn’t look more realistic.

i guess the real RRs reuse rail as well,

thanks greg

6

I would not used kinked rail. I have tried getting the kinks out and it just never looks right. My oppinion anyway.