Thin Branch Series: Painting track with an airbrush

Comments MRR
1

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Thin Branch Series: Painting track with an airbrush

2

One tip not mentioned, before you spray your track with an airbrush you can take a small clean rag or even some gauze and spray it with wd-40 or some other light oil, then slowly run the oiled patch along just the top edge of the rails

After you paint the rails take any sort of rag or gauze and carefully apply pressure to just the top edge of the rails and the paint will slide right off with very little effort

3

My experience is that denatured alcohol attacks the plastic ties. Are you cutting that liquid in some way before using it?

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Good one Cody… Thx

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Hi Cody! I have trouble with the one rail sliding back and forth on my N scale flex track when I clean the tops of the rail off after painting the rail! Sometimes you can see some shiny areas on the sides of the rail when this happens! The track is secured to the cork roadbed. Any tips on preventing this?

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Here’s an option… I now use 1/8" masking tape and mask off the top of the rails. This means that cleaning using a ‘bright boy’ cleaner is minimal. Believe it or not, using masking tape this small is not as fiddly as you might think. I’m also wary of using anything abrasive on the rail head as small scratches are not good. Btw, excellent videos on all track ‘how to’ Cody! Invaluable.

7

Couldn’t you solder wires to the switch points & run them to the DCC bus wires, same as the track & never have to worry about them getting dirty or cleaning them? They would be hot no matter how dirty that spot gets. Anyone else done it this way?