dr_spock Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 Great job. HO nickel silver rail shouldn't be hard to bend as model railroaders use them to hand laid tracks. I've seen them used in hand made switches too. Quote
SteveB Posted December 28, 2015 Author Posted December 28, 2015 I gave it a shot in my garage with a dremel and a little jig I whipped up real quick. Pretty easy to do. Any minor imperfections are invisible once the rail is in place. <photo removed> These are both the inner and outer radii of a ME Models R56 curve, which is the tightest curve that this would have to work on. The nickle silver rail has no problems taking to the bend. Awesome! You win the prize as the first to try it!!! :-D I'd love to see the setup too. I tried a Dremel tool in the "Dremel Drill Press rig" and couldn't keep it form melting the rails. I think I got one good cut form every two I tried. I'll take a snap shot of the Harbor Freight drill press setup I ended up using. The rotation speed is around 320 RPM, so the plastic melting is kept to a minimum. I bet with the collaboration on this forum... a best know method can be developed and this will be an affordable and easy modification, until we get someone to manufacture them! :-) Steve Quote
kieran Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 This looks amazing, need to fine a supplier here in the us for the rails and I will have a go Quote
SteveB Posted December 28, 2015 Author Posted December 28, 2015 I found that buying Atlas HO code 100 flex track and de-railing them isn't a bad way to go in small volumes. Steve Quote
legoman666 Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 Prepare for the extraordinary: A drill press would probably work better. Quote
JCForsythe Posted January 8, 2016 Posted January 8, 2016 So, has anyone used this for their 9v trains? Quote
carbon60 Posted January 30, 2016 Posted January 30, 2016 I was investigating how easy it was to buy just the rail individually (without stripping down track) and came across C&L HiNi rail. I don't know how good it is but one selling point it had was its colour. They state how the colour is more similar to steel rail than regular nickel silver rail that has more of a yellow effect. Colour is one thing I hadn't even thought about until I saw that. Steve, how close is the colour of the rail that you were using to the 9V Lego rail? From your video it looks fairly close. Quote
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