Any value in the none electric blue rail?

[segambit]

Got a offer to buy a old lego set that is blue railway. Its not a full set but its a few trails+rails.

Any value?

[johanby]

That depends. For me, the blue rail has significant nostalgic value from my childhood and I prefer using it over newer rails. On the other hand, it works best with the trains from that period and also takes more time to set up. Moreover, my Emerald Night tends to derail in the blue points, but as long as you don't use points, it works fine on the blue rail.

Edited January 23, 2010 by johanby

[vgo]

Unless the parts are in mint condition they don't have much value ie. one piece of straight rail costs $0.05 - $0.10 on BrickLink.

Edited January 23, 2010 by vgo

[Legoist]

If you mean money value, then then don't have much.

But if you mean building value, there are comments around that these old rails were not sturdy due to the fact that they connected with studs to normal 2x6 plates (instead of the different, sturdy method used by 12V rails). I can't say much about this because I never had blue rails, but there have been discussions about this topic in the forum.

The only other question is whether you like the look of blue rails or not. Some people cannot stand them because they look too plastic and not like real steel rails.

Personally I wouldn't mind having a blue section of rails in a layout, as long as differently-coloured rails (including old gray vs new gray) are always clumped together in sections and not just alternating randomly. Furthermore, I'd gladly use blue rails rather than grey ones for non-train uses, such as narrow-gauge (or single-rail) industrial-type carriage systems.

[mendes]

Well I only have blue rails (my dark age lasted rather a long time):

But if you have only used the modern ones until you will find the blue ones a bit more time consuming setting up.

Derailments can be caused by:

1 Skewed rails. You need to make sure that the joins between the curves and straights are smooth

2 Worn rails and sleepers (the 2x8 white plates) may not hold together very securely any more, particularly the curves. You can rectify this though by adding an extra sleeper in the middle of a pair of rails.

For me the reason for using blue rails is because I had them and i only have old trains. But if you are starting out you will probably already have some new ones and to start mixing them would in my opinion not look good. The only reason to start getting them now would be if you wanted to quickly build a large layout cheaply. But remember, there is no shortage of these rails so dont pressure yourself!