Scaletrax

1. Yes

2. Yes, although that certainly wouldn't be my choice

3. Rustproof--yes; get dirty quick--no quicker than any other track

4. Judge for yourself by viewing Rich Battista's fine videos.

5. It's not really designed or intended to be a "floating" system.  Would normally be screwed in place like most permanent track systems.

Hi trainman13,

All of the above advice has been spot on.  There are some details you want check out in the switches before you screw them down, but it's nothing exotic.  I discussed the things that need checking in my OGR article in Run 251.  The really great feature of ScaleTrax is the flex track.  It lets you build any curve you want.  ScaleTrax really shines when you move beyond the confines of rigid sectional track and learn some new track laying techniques that are more common in 2-rail.

Check out Rich Battista's Black Diamond Railway.  If you think you might go with ScaleTrax go ahead and get his videos.  There's a lot of good info for building your entire layout.  Here's a few photos from the NorthWest Trunk Lines for encouragement.

Dave:

How did you substitute the ScaleTrax for the Atlas in that truss bridge? Did you re-construct the decking?

Matt,   I used the Atlas decking in another bridge project I built and was able to remove the Atlas rails easily and inserted the Scaletrax rails from the flextrack after pulling them free of their ties. It went quite quickly and has been fine.

Hi Matt,

As Sam described, you can substitute the rail without much trouble.  The ScaleTrax rail is a loose fit, but a little super glue will take care of that.

In this case, however, we went the extra mile and built a new wood deck using O scale ties from Right-O-Way.  One of our scenery artists, Jen Theroux, made a jig to assemble the ties into panels that match the dimensions of the Atlas plastic ties panels.  She "creosoted" the ties ahead of time with acrylic paint, and then spiked the ties to a couple boards on the outer edge.

Here you can see one of the wood panels between the stock plastic panels.

Once the ties were all down I spiked ScaleTrax rail using Xeron spiking pliers and Right-O-Way spikes.  I also added code 148 guard rails for extra realism.  In all its was somewhere around 1200 spikes!

I painted the steel work flat black, added a light weathering with acrylic paint and alcohol, and called it good.

C.Sam, Dave:

Thanks for the info.