Anybody make plastic rail?

Interesting concept.

How about reusing the plastic rails from cheap O or G size Battery sets.

Or use a cheap 3d printer to make your own rails.

@totrainyard posted:

How about reusing the plastic rails from cheap O or G size Battery sets.

Too much work to salvage.  Plus. not typically to any scale suitable for my needs.

Or use a cheap 3d printer to make your own rails.

Does beg the quesstion as to whether 3d can be created continuously while the finish product is being extracted at the same rate....i.e., continuous rail.

OTOH, I'm not geeky enough to master the computer-managed equipment, not interested in buying capital equipment for which I only have one immediate, short-term use, and I'd rather have one of our fine Made-In-America companies benefit a larger market than just moi.

BTW...   If you look at some of Plastruct's structural components...H, I, L, T, Z, U etc. cross-sections, for example..., IMHO they're extruded, then cut to retail lengths.  I don't see evidence of the cross-sections being machined.  Besides, there would be a terrific amount of waste plastic in machining, say, a 1/2" H-girder!!  Extruding a specific X-section in plastic is pretty much by now a ho-hum technique...tooling-intensive, not capital-intensive...for those in the biz.

KD

You mentioned "...rail lying along existing right-of-way ready for replacement, maintenance?  Lineside racks of 39' rails...a common lineside sight through the early part of the last century. ..." I solved that issue by removing and painting the rails from Atlas O  track.  In fact I suggested to the late Jim Weaver of Atlas O that they should consider packaging lengths (maybe 10 per tube) of O scale track as a separate sale item for just what you mentioned.

“Does beg the quesstion as to whether 3d can be created continuously while the finish product is being extracted at the same rate....i.e., continuous rail.”

The answer is yes. Google “Print Mill”. It is a 3D printer that prints on a treadmill-esque belt so it can print as long as you can feed filament into the extruder.  They head moves X and Y, the belt functions as infinite Z. I don’t know if any are on the market but I have seen the concept.  I’m sure they’re thousands of bucks if they’re on sale.

@modeltrainsparts posted:

You mentioned "...rail lying along existing right-of-way ready for replacement, maintenance?  Lineside racks of 39' rails...a common lineside sight through the early part of the last century. ..." I solved that issue by removing and painting the rails from Atlas O  track.  In fact I suggested to the late Jim Weaver of Atlas O that they should consider packaging lengths (maybe 10 per tube) of O scale track as a separate sale item for just what you mentioned.

Ross does this (#912, msrp $24.95 for pkg of 25 @10" ea.).  Even though it's not solid rail, 'rusted' up (paint) they'd do well as near-39' representatives.

But that works out to $1 per rail!!!  C'mon, man!...a same length of Styrene/ABS should be far less than that!!!

Besides, I have a 7' urban curved trestle w/Gargraves 3-rail, among other bridges.  I'd rather have l-o-n-g lengths of plastic rail to easily/quickly spike in some dandy guard rails.  Hey, if I have to paint them to get them to 'rust', so be it!

BTW...Your rail rack is VERY cool...just like the one shown in that famous Lionel Bantam Book, Model Railroading, discussed in another thread, and like the one I cobbled as a pre-teen in the 1950's from that book.  But I had to use plain sticks of painted wood to represent rails back then!

Removing/painting rails from complete track pieces is always a fall back.  But as I said in my original post, the old brain keeps coming up with other uses for cheap/quick/'non-functional' scale rail.  I'm hoping the plastics guys will bite on this.

Then again, I thought there'd be a decent aftermarket for see-through steel grid roof walks for 40' and 50' boxcars...like the outstanding ones on Atlas, MTH, Lionel pricey top-of-the-line RTR models...like Kadee has made available in HO from their highly successful, highly detailed line of boxcars.  Looking at rooftops of everything, including rolling stock, is a common viewing angle for most layouts.  Why not have decent aftermarket parts for the same??  But I digress.....

KD

I find used Atlas track at train shows cheap - often under tables - cheap.

InterMountain  when they were in O scale used to sell nicely detailed roof walks in both steel grid and wood plank.  I have used them on custom projects.  I'm sure someone here remembers who InterMountain sold its O scale tooling to.

All my guardrails are from Trainworx, the same company that recently posted pictures of a fabulous train layout and table for a private customer. It's called r31 trussrail. I first learned about it at York some time ago.  Here's how I used it:

https://www.twtrainworxstore.c...oduct/r31-trussrail/

Bruce...

The guard rails I'm referring to are shown in this photo...

...The two rusted rails between the main track rails.  Their purpose is to hold a wheel derailment on the trestle or bridge.  These would be easy to add to regular track that traverses our layout bridges.  Many of the prototype guard rails taper together at either approach to the bridge, ...

...another feature easily added with plastic rails with the added benefit of not creating an electrical short circuit in the event of an actual wheel derailment.

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Re making a lineside rail rack, or some other use for 39' sections of rail...  It was pointed out that an easy detail to add to plastic rail pieces in such a setting would be the bolt holes at each rail end.  Drilling small holes through plastic rail web would be far easier...and less prone to broken drill bits!...that through nickel silver, brass, tinplated steel, stainless steel, ....ANY metal.  A simple 3-hole jig would make that a fast detail to add at each rail end.

I still think it would be a neat idea to have plastic rails available...pre-colored rusty, or at least easily paintable.

KD

In these two pics, you can see that I used lengths of Atlas 2-rail rail to form guard rails for my truss bridge:

Several companies sell rail in bulk for handlaying track.  Rail a little smaller than the running rails will tend to impress their secondary status on the viewer and make fitting them in place easier.

Here's a thought,  did you consider old American Flyer S gauge track? It's 1/4 inch tall,  the same size as O27, has a T rail cross section with a flat top instead of tubular . It's usually dirt cheap,  a friend gave me about 40 feet for free because he was tired of storing it at his house.