[rchawk49]

AND.............   SwitchCrafters also sells aluminum track and flex ties at pretty good prices!   (shameless plug for you Bruce)


How do we get the 1st Class Member discount?/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gif


/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gifHawk-still moving dirt!

 

[gigawat]

I have been under the impression that LGB track is the most robust track period... What do you guys think?

If you do a deck layout would you choose a particular type over another?
If you do a garden layout would you choose a particular type over another?

Okay... I know this is a loaded question so let me fix some of the variables...

Location, Southwest Florida... Warm year round. We get some heavy rain... and that is about it... (Okay... mother nature has been known to send some really bad hurricanes our way....)
I don't care about prototypical railroad ties or rail height..... I want quality, something that will last "forever" I love my LGB track, but that is only because I have never seen / touched anything else.

Looks like the rail bender is a must!

 

[lownote]

A rail bender is a fantastic tool--I use mine all the time. As to track, the are some annoying things about LGB track. The ties are too big. But if you don't care about appearance, that's no problem. But the joiners--they're very unreliable. They're great for a while, but then the lose tension and you get losses in track power. The ties are fixed to the track by the joiner, and it's sort of a pain to remove the joiner. I end up bending them open and kind of wrenching them off, then throwing them away. You can buy track clamps which fit over the joiners, and work well that way, which are a great idea, but Iv'e found over time that I've removed all the LGB slip-joiners.

Aristo uses a system with very small machine screws, and it works very well--much better long term than the LGB slip joints. But the little screws are not easy to deal with. You should look at AML track. The quality is good and it's cheaper than aristo.

If I were starting from scratch today I would probably go with code 250 track in nickel silver

 

[Totalwrecker]

gigawat,
my experience is with Aristo SS because I liked the color of the rail. My temperature extremes meet or exceede yours plus the rain and wind. Add 300 pound cloven hooved pecarraries to the mix I've got no complaints. No kinks either! Should last for ever.
Cleaning is simple, no oxidation.
Before I got sick I was hand shaping siding tracks for a funky look, rails in/on the dirt.

It's an empty question to me.

Happy Rails

John

 

[Ron Hill]

Lownote, all of the rails on my double track layout is 8' flextrack. I have 8" between track centerlines and all the track is floating. Even with thermal expansion the track keeps about 7" between track centerlines.
Ron

 

[Dick Friedman]

Code 332 track is the most robust of all the sizes. I can see no difference in the mfgrs. Maybe they all come from the same factory in China. Code 250 is smaller in height, has less metal mass, regardless of which material it is made of.

Train Li bender is great, but expensive. It's worth joining a club to get use of one.

The difference between large scale flex and smaller stuff is that LS flex track is bendable but springs back. My old N-scale flex track would maintain its curve.

 

[Dan Pierce]

All track comes from China ???????? Where did this come from????

LGB track used to be from Germany and now is from Hungary, and Train-Li pro-line track is from Germany. These are located far from China.

Interesting as to how the china made brass track has a bright brass finish that stays for years and the track from Europe outdoors gets a dull finish in less than a year.

 

[Greg Elmassian]

I'm certain there are differences in the brass alloy composition, and USAT track ages more quickly than Aristo (which does indeed seem to stay the shiniest). But both of these are manufactured in China.

Not really sure if this has anything to do with quality, but there's definitely quality differences in track. One well known brand has had many reports of cracking in cold climates and poorly located holes etc.

There is a difference.

Greg

 

[Totalwrecker]

Posted By lownote on 03 Jan 2008 07:14 AM


This is a dumb question, I know. Hard to believe it's not clear, I know, but bear with me please.


What is meant by flex track? I have a piece of software called "rail modeller" that lets me insert  sections of LBG flex trax and bend them, within lmits--does it come in sections like that?  I ask because  I bought a few 5 foot sections of Aristo 335 track, and noticed it was very flexible--it seemed like it would be quite easy to take four or five sections of that track and make a nice gentle curve. Does that count as flex track? If I got a rail bender, could I get a five foot section to make a sharper curve? I have a beginner's book which says "if you need a rail bender, it's tme to switch to sectional track."


Then I see brass rail sold in single 8 foot lengths, and ties sold seperately as well--is this what's meant as flex track? I'd buy a bunch of 8 foot sections and bend them either gently by hand or usng a ral bender, then slip them into the ties? That seems extremely hard to do--how do you ever get two seperate rails to the same curve. It seems dauntingly hard.


Is there a good primer anywhere on using flex track? My wife and I are planning to add on to our holiday layout and make it year round, and I want to do it right.


 


Thanks!

 

[Totalwrecker]

Dang a hours worth of answer stolen when I used the Quotation option.

Shad It's time to renew my 1st class member ship, be nice to have 1s class software too!

 

[Greg Elmassian]

That quote option makes a mess out of posts unless you are sure you are "outside" of the html tags... the only way I can be sure is to switch the "1st class editor" to html to move my input outside the "danger zone"..

Greg

 

[Pete Thornton]

It's time to renew my 1st class member ship, be nice to have 1s class software too!
I second that emotion.

 

[SteveC]

What is so difficult about the keyboard shortcut {Ctrl+End}? Which by the way has been around since the introduction of WordStar (c. 1978 & CP/M).

 

[Greg Elmassian]

for some reason Steve, it does not seem to always work for me, nor does control home, which is where I prefer to put my replies...

On top of that, the html
stuff seems to make the reply a morphing glob of text sometimes... Trust me, with 11,000 posts, I'm not making this up!

Greg

p.s. the first editor I used on my pc was WordStar on dos... used the Wang word processor system which of course predated that... I use keyboard shortcuts all the time... people are amazed that there are keystrokes for cut and paste... I even used IBM's FORMAT system on punched cards... BTDT

 

[kormsen]

Posted By lownote on 03 Jan 2008 01:59 PM


Also as I look at those threads on the train li I see you can bend radius1 cruves. I have a ton of lgb 1100 curves, the result of some gifts given to my son over the years by his late grandfather. maybe 5 full circles worth. I could use the bender to re shape those and it would pay for itself in saving the cost of new track


Interesting--thanks!








it is not too difficult converting R1 curves to bigger radii.
have a look in the following link. most of the straights and all of the curves were R1s before. http://kormsen.info/tracks/

there are just a few things to think about.
for larger curves cut the tie-webbing on the inner sides of the curves (between all ties)(if you want to make straights, cut out the webbing of the outer side)
because of different lenghts, you will either have to cut one rail of every section, or you stagger the connectors of the two rails, then cut just one per curve.

the benders do not help much to bend 1 foot sections, because they can not bend the two ends. your hands and a small hammer used on the railfoot work perfect.

 

[SteveC]

Greg

All I can say is I haven't yet not had the respective keyboard shortcuts work for me in any one of the browsers that I have installed, although I primarily use MS/IE. Additionally, it is very easy to visually confirm if it didn't because the insertion point cursor wouldn't be to the far left of the message content area. It would be offset to the right (i.e. indented) because of still being within the "blockquote" HTML tag.

 

[Totalwrecker]

Steve, it used to work fine, I didn't know until it was lost that I needed to jump through hoops first!
As for protocols that's greek to me, I became pc literate durning the For Dummies era, heck I can't even get Save As back to jpegs from ping!

I still think there oughter be an easier way!
John

 

[Greg Elmassian]

Not to belabor the point, but I have done this many times:

hit the quote
used the cursor keys to go to the upper left... hold the left arrow until the cursor stops... and still when I started typing I was "inside" the quote block.

I use Firefox pretty exclusively, but such a simple function should not be difficult... also what is worse is the "morphing glob" of the quoted text that often happens to me.

I believe you have no problem. I do encounter problems, and I work around them, but I've been using computers since 1969 and earning a living doing it, so if I have problems, then I would assume that others do also, especially people of less professional experience with computers. (it's too friggin' touchy)

Greg

 

[SteveC]

Posted By Greg Elmassian on 07 Apr 2012 02:58 PM
Not to belabor the point, but I have done this many times:
Greg

Nowhere within my reply did I suggest that you weren't encountering a problem, now did I.

The HTML editor will not allow you to break out of a tag at the beginning of the content area, it never has, and you can go to the CuteSoft web site and try that same thing on their latest & greatest demo software and you'll run into the same condition. Why their software is written that way I have no idea, except that while it emulates the MS/Word user interface, it also follows the rules to create XHTML compliant code???? I guess it could also be a configuration thing that can be altered but I haven't happened across any documentation that implies that that is the case.

Which may be why when the editor opens and displays the content of a quoted reply, it's located at the top of the message content area, expecting the reply text to be placed below the quote and not above it.


So yes you are correct, in so far as if you wish to place your reply above the content of a quoted reply then you'll have to manually switch to the "HTML View" insert the respective HTML tag you wish to use prior to the opening "blockquote" tag, to acomplish the task.

 

[Greg Elmassian]

Thanks for going to the effort to understand me precisely Steve... it's a little goofy that you can't get "ahead" of the html formatting, and for people who don't jump into the html view, just gives unpredictable results when trying to go there.

I have never tried to put the quote at the beginning and my response at the end, I guess my habit is to put the new information first, and anyone who needs the supporting information can read further.

Old habit!

Greg