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Tip and Tricks

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Western Bay Railroads

Ribbon Rail Rack

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On the Port Saint Lucie O narrow Gage Railroad  www.westernbayrailroad.org we use Micro Engineering On30 flex track exclusively  for our 1000 plus feet of main line as well as in the yards and sidings and we hold the minimum radius at thirty six (36) inches.

I have found the best product for reducing/ eliminating kinks in our curves as well as for planning the route on the sub roadbed is a product called ‘Ribbon Rail’.  These are metal gauges cut to width to fit tightly between the rails (HO in our case) and come in both five (5) inch as well as ten (10) inch lengths.   

When we lay our curves as well (as tangents) we secure the flex track with white ‘Liquid Nails’, in which we secure with weights for a couple of hours until dry.  We use the ribbon rails of the correct radius to get and hold the curve while the ‘Liquid Nails’ dries.  The problem the group (club?) here in PSL has found is keeping track (no pun) of all the loose radius plates when not in use. 

Please see a simple and quick solution we found to solve this issue:  A Ribbon Rail Rack.

I made the rack from an old Piano Wire tube, (one could use PVC pipe if no small mailing tube were available in the ‘junk draw’.) Styrofoam and foam core…I wanted to keep it light.  I used clear ‘Liquid Nails’ to hold everything together painted it a bright yellow (so one could easily locate it in our layout room) and used our label maker to label all the pockets.  Of course, one could use a marking pen for this as this is not meant to win any modeling awards just function as another tool and for us, while we are building the Western Bay Railroad.