OK, the cost of everything in Model Railroading has gone way up… that is fine and reality. Quality of everything is really much better… that is great.
How come we do not have a better choice for rail than Nickel Silver? When I began back in the 1970s, brass was bad, nickel silver was great because it had a conductive oxide and never needed to be cleaned. Tyco Tru-Steel was not successful as an alternative.
OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well.
Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy?
I have stated before that I think track is still the weakest point in this hobby, and something we all have in common to deal with no matter what your era or prototype.
Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage?
Walthers is releasing a $25.00 switch motor that looks “A+ #1 Fantastic!”
How about a $45.00 turnout that solves all my problems to go along with it? I would pay $12.00 for a piece of flex track that is bullet proof and never needs to be cleaned.
Stuff gets dirty, so will nickle silver or whatever other material. Many materials corrode or become otherwise compromised by well-known issues. But it’s important not to confuse the two. You can do something about dirty track. Track that itself deteriorates is basically unsolvable without switching to something different.
N-S track never promised that it wouldn’t need cleaning, simply that it would largely solve the problems associated with other track materials like brass or steel.
If you have a dirty track problem with N-S rail, then you either quit making it dirty or you figure a better way to clean it. It’s not the track material that’s the problem, but dirt and crud. If you don’t solve the cleaning puzzle (depending on your local environment and other factors) they will still affect performance, even if the rail is gold.
Stainless steel does sound like the ticket, but…(and I’m the furthest from a specialist in metallurgy one could point at), it’s quite a bit more costly to produce, and the tooling to make rail-shaped wire out of it would be costly and have to be replaced often as stainless steel is hard. Nickel silver is like Gruyer cheese compared to stainless steel. Then, there’s that brittleness problem; NS has it all over stainless when it comes to bending it time in and time out.
A good question. And excellent points so far by all. We’ll surely get a few electrical engineers and metalurgists to respond. They will likely speak of two issues. First, the material itself and such things as innate internal resistance, as some metals pass current (my old Navy electronic instructors called it “hole flow”) more readily that others, The second regards the micro deposits produced when the transfer of that current passes between dissimilar materials (the rails and your engine and car pickups). And remember, there’s still going to be dust and natural oxidation (look what happens to copper even without its being used as a conductor). More or less, our lot is to clean until we croak.
I understand the best is gold. Presuming an alloy that looked like steel, are we willing to go that far? Well, it might have a nice side benefit: in the case of an economic meltdown, we could turn our industrial spurs into food, clothing, gas and ammunition - not necessarily in that order, of course!
On occasion we are frustrated by the advance of technology because we assume that for most everything it should be almost unbounded, subject only to innovation. And as far as everyday consumers are concerned, economics. But in material matters, physics and chemistry establish the ultimate parameters. We could reset this entire issue into the realm of health. Why have we not yet gotten to the point of living until 500 or, being not too greedy, just 200? And if not even 200, why can’t we at least look like we’re 30 until we die?
Yes, there is silver in silver solder, but that is a very different animal and not much use in our hobby. It has a higher melting (and flowing) temperature; in the range of 900 degrees to 1350 degrees depending on the composition. It can not be used with a Weller 40 watt iron, a fairly hot flame is needed.
As for using actual silver in the rails . . . it is not as ridiculous as it sounds, and probably not as expensive as you might think. Sterling silver (92.5%) would be excellent, coin silver (90%) would be every bit as good. Billion silver (40%) would be leap years ahead of our current brassy ‘nickel silver’. Any alloy with significant amounts of silver would extrude well, conduct electricity well, flex extremely well, and tarnish to a very pleasing shade of gray. The railhead contact surface would gleam to a realistic mirrored edge. Most of the cost of manufacture for the current brass (yes, ‘nickel silver’ is actually brass) flextrack is in the tooling and workmanship, not the materials.
The answer has been staring us in the face all along! Use Gruyere cheese for rail. After all we are moving to battery power anyway so conductivity and solder-ability will soon be irrelevant. We could bake our ties out of cracker dough and lightly melt the Gruyere cheese rails onto the ties. And best of all we’d finally have the respect of the French, which is so important.
Let’s start with my beef. Track is a model too and why does it still look like brass track from the 50s? Even C83 is clunky and toyish looking.
C70 rail would have been the better choice by far.
Regardless if flex track cost 99 cents or $99.00 it would still need cleaning because track cleaning worries has been shoved down our throats by the “experts”.
I’ve said it before even with my DCC/Sound engines I still haven’t found the need to constantly clean track. I still use nothing but,a old school bright boy that still works as far as cleaning track on a as needed bases.
I also think the decoders that features “Keep Alive” technology just may be the best thing since peanut butter and jelly.