Can someone explain flex track to me?

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!

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

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!

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.

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.

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.