Attempt to improve the blue track / '70s trains

[legotux]

Hi

I recently took interest in my old Lego train from my youth. While buying extra track and points secondhand I discovered the 'new' grey '80s 12V rails. But excitement quickly turned into disappointment; the track is very tedious to disassemble and those clips break very easily. I started looking at the old blue rails. Could I add an extra sleeper there? Well, no: the outer rails would allow it, but the electric conductor rail doesn't: there are plastic ridges in the way. My initial idea was to 'dremel' those off, but that has bad drawbacks: extreme amount of work, and damaging the rails. Then I realized that adding one sleeper was hard, but adding two sleepers was possible. But a rail being 16 studs long meant that you can't evenly divide them into threes. That is, unless you can live with either uneven gaps between sleepers, or... you can make one in two connecting sleepers twice as wide: 4x8.

The white sleepers were badly discolored anyway, so getting new, more realistic sleepers was welcome. I placed a monster order for 360 dark grey sleepers. Also a bunch of 4x8 dark grey wider sleepers. I contemplated brown sleepers but feared brown + blue might not go together so well.

The curved track, as opposed to the straight track, offers arbitrary positioning of the sleepers except for the middle and end positions. So three sleepers, evenly distributed, can be added to curved track.

These discoveries made the blue rails very attractive suddenly: one more sleeper than the '80s grey track, no breaking clips. The blue rails are remarkably more robust with 3 sleepers per length instead of one. So much so that you can step on the track with near-zero risk of damage. And by its nature, blue track with 12V conductor rails is compatible with all Lego trains, except 9V. All others, 4.5V, 12V, PF, PU will run fine I believe.

My only surprise was that nobody before me discovered and embraced this...? But I haven't found a trace of that (to date), and never did see pictures of blue track with added sleepers. Obviously, everyone just migrated to grey track, then 9V, then all-plastic PF and beyond... quite logical.

On slopes, having 3 sleepers per length also works out well: one plate per sleeper adds up to one block per rail, with is 7.5% inclination which most if not all Lego trains can still handle ok.

Many of the parts I ordered have now arrived so I have some photos to share of how this 'new' blue track looks:

 

Entire album here: https://imgur.com/a/QAy6DMn

Hope you like,
Legotux
 

[JopieK]

Welcome to EB Legotux, very nice indeed those (bluish) dark gray sleepers.

[Feuer Zug]

Welcome to Eurobricks. The use of the sleepers with the blue rails is interesting and a good discovery.

[legotux]

Thanks! 

I hope to finish my track in the next days/weeks. I wish it didn't take up so much space...

Legotux