Tribulations of Flextrack and Living in a Barn!

Tribulations of Flextrack and Living in a Barn!

by Gary Myers

While I was dutifully painting the rail of the flextrack, to give it a more proper appearance, my eye looked back down along the track and was shocked to find a kink in the track, staring me right back in the face!

This track kink along the Marshall Pass line stood out like a sore thumb when eyed along the track!

As many of you may know, my railroad club is housed in an outbuilding at the Lockheed Martin recreation area. Well, our club building is basically a STEELCO garage building, a type of quonset hut. We have a heater that turns on automatically when it gets cold, and have installed two air conditioners for when the days get hot. Before we had air-conditioning, former member Dan Gorny used to say the clubhouse reminded him of Alec Guinness' sweat hut from the movie, "Bridge on the River Kwai".

Sweat Box - Colonel Nicholsen (Alec Guiness) is ordered back to the clubhouse (in background) to fix track kinks!

Our clubhouse has two garage doors, minimal insulation, and does not have air-conditioning running all summer. Last winter we experienced very cold days, the clubhouse warmed to only 42 degrees, and that was when the heater fuse had not blown and it got even colder! Needless to say, we experience very wide temperature variations for our layout - which is essentially stored in a barn. Without sufficient gaps between separate pieces of track or rails, the expansion during hot days may cause track kinks. We have had hand-laid track pry itself out of the spikes from expansion into "S" curves. Along our Marshall Pass line, I found 4 track kinks at the joint between pieces of flextrack that had been soldered together along the rail joiners. Because the rails had nowhere to expand, they kinked at the solder joints (because the solder formed a softer joint than the solid rail) due to thermal expansion from warmer temperatures. The kinks were severe enough to cause narrow gauge passenger cars and K-27s to derail. Unfortunately, when the colder temperatures arrived, the tracks did not de-kink themselves, even though the track did contract.

Extreme Temperature - Wintertime can be abominable at the clubhouse, especially when the heater fuse blows!

What I found was that flextrack was very difficult to repair and remove kinks. The flextrack had been caulked to cork roadbed, then soldered together at the rail joiners. Because I needed to "gap" the rail along curves, curves which exceeded the length of a single piece of flextrack, I needed to have a "gap" on curved rail. The flextrack tends to want to straighten itself, so at the ends of the pieces, the flextrack fails to follow the curve and want to go straight - not good for a smooth curve!

I decided to place a gap in the curved flextrack the same as I do with my hand-laid track. My method was to replace the cork roadbed with ¼" lauan plywood, add wood ties and spike the rail in place along the curve. As shown in Photo 2, I have replaced a section of the cork roadbed with the lauan roadbed, which I sabered out of a sheet of plywood adding the 45 degree taper along both sides. I made a paper template of the original roadbed to cut out the lauan. Note how the rails from the flextrack want to go straight in the photograph.

 ¼" Lauan roadbed replaces the original cork roadbed where the rails in the flextrack had kinked, You can see how the rails resist curving and want to be straight.

The rails were carefully cut at the joiner using my thinnest razor saw. I used my soldering iron to remove the joiner and solder, and cleaned up the rail from remaining solder using my fiberglass tipped weathering brush. Caution - make sure you carefully vacuum the area for fiberglass particles after usage because these tiny, brittle fibers can be very dangerous (and painful) if you ever get them in your skin. The fiberglass brush does clean up any residual solder nicely, though, without scratching the rail.

Next, I had to pry up the track further to get ties placed under the rails, sanding them to the proper thickness, then gluing in place. However before that could be done, the old caulk had to be painstakenly scraped off the surviving cork so the track would sit flush again on the roadbed.

Further aggravation from prying up some of the good track to get ties in place, which have to be checked for correct height and glued in. Luckily, flextrack that had been caulked was not too hard to pry up, but caulk had to be scraped off to re-caulk the roadbed.

I made the mistake of cutting one kink with my handy Dremel Tool, using my favorite Sears Craftsman cutting wheel. Well, needless to say, the gap that was left at the ends of the rail was bigger than I really wanted, it seemed like an 1/8 of an inch, at least. So I switched to my thinnest razor saw, which I preferred. By applying pressure between my my thumb and index finger, I formed a slight curve along the ends of the flextrack until the curve was as close to the curve I wanted, with the track almost sitting there by itself. Cutting with my thin saw, had allowed me test to fit the rails back together, so I could use my metal file to slowly and carefully widen the gap somewhere on the order of about 1/32".  My handlaid rails have successfully operated with such gaps. And oh, by the way, I never use any rail joiners on any of my handlaid track and switches, anywhere! Heresy you say! I don't like joiners because they put a bump on my ties (unless the ties are sanded down a little, and I don't like the look of them either). We have operated quite a bit on the dual and standard gauge tracks on the layout and have not had any derailments due to rail gaps (and no joiners). So fear not to tread on untested waters, I have walked on them! (I double-dog-dare you diehard joiner fans out there!)

At a couple kink locations, the rails were cut to leave a large gap requiring another short piece of rail, because the kink had caused the original rails to buckle at the rail joiner, meaning the rails had deformed enough at the location to make it too difficult to smooth out. I cut out about 4 to 6 inches of rail at those spots, because shorter pieces of rail are harder to put a smooth curve into and harder to work with, at least for me.

A longer portion of rail was cut out here where the track had deformed, bending like a "Z" at the joiner as opposed to an "S", creating two irreparable bends at the ends of the rails in the flextrack. New roadbed extends partially under the old flextrack which can now be spiked along the curve.

The work is far from over. The ties have to be glued and stained. The flextrack has some ties stripped back so that the rails can be curved (again, by applying pressure between the thumb and index finger), then spiked to the new ties. If necessary, a splice piece of rail 4-6" long may have to be installed as mentioned above. One rail along one side of the curve is spiked into place, and is eyeballed along its length (by placing one's eye close down along the rail), checking for smoothness. The other rail is gauged into place and spiked. For DCC, the rule in our club is that every piece of rail requires a track feeder (especially since it is gapped without joiners), so additional feeders were required at least on one side of the gap. Finally, the rails are repainted. Another thing I learned, paint the rails before you spike them, it is not only a lot easier to paint, but that way the ties don't get painted rail color, too.

This kink repair shows a spliced segment of rail, where extra ties were added near the gaps to spike the ends of the flextrack and rail splices, to smooth the curve as much as possible. Normally, I do not use extra ties at gaps but found it helpful for the ends of the flextrack which resist curving.