Ed's Law - Prototype Flex Track Installation, La Grange, KY

[Philip H]

[CRL]

Where was the giant bottle of diluted white glue to secure the ballast in place?

[ednadolski]

Looks like some of that Proto:48 flex track that I have lying around somewhere.

Ed

[mu26aeh]

Where was the giant bottle of diluted white glue to secure the ballast in place?

They just mixed in some Ballast Magic and let the rain soak in

[nkalanaga]

Western Pacific, years ago, tested "bonded ballast".  According to the one news report I saw, the "glue" was activated with ammonia, so was waterproof.  I never heard anymore about it, and suspect that they found replacing ties to be difficult, if not impossible.

[davefoxx]

Western Pacific, years ago, tested "bonded ballast".  According to the one news report I saw, the "glue" was activated with ammonia, so was waterproof.  I never heard anymore about it, and suspect that they found replacing ties to be difficult, if not impossible.

I'm no civil engineer, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.  It would seem to me that making the roadbed rigid would cause problems, not unlike why ballasted deck bridges are preferred over bolting the track to the bridge superstructure in some cases.

DFF

[nkalanaga]

That could be another reason I never heard more about it.  I suspect it was an attempt to keep welded rail stable, as the test was in Nevada, but most roads use rail anchors for that, and let the track "flex" slightly, over the length of the rail, to adjust for temperature changes.

Not knowing what kind of glue it was, the glue may have been flexible, like using matte medium vs white glue on a model, but I don't remember that detail being mentioned.  The entire "article" was only a paragraph or so.

[peteski]

When I was at a Shinkansen train station in Japan, waiting on the platform for the bullet train, I noticed that the ballast was coated with some sort of shiny substance.  I imagine they did that so a train passing at high speed does not kick up the ballast onto the platform.