ME Flex

[jereising]

Industry standard practice is to use wood ties for switches on concrete tie mains.  As mentioned, the concrete can't take the pounding a switch produces.  You MIGHT find concrete tie switches on light rail or subway, but not on a class 1 main.

[DKS]

CSX apparently thinks they can get away with it...

[Scottl]

I assumed it was because each tie would need to have different mounting lugs so it would be expensive to manufacture.

[Leggy]

Concrete tie turnouts are used around the world, as Scott has said due to each tie being different they are ridiculously expensive vs timber sleepers hence why timber turnouts are still used.

[Baronjutter]

I remember in europe, one of the few times I've seen and even been in a real train, I saw a lot of concrete turnouts and track.  Well now I kinda wish I had ordered ME concrete... oh well !!

Are wooden mainlines still used or is it all concrete?

[DKS]

Are wooden mainlines still used or is it all concrete?

It will be quite a long while yet before wood ties are all gone.

[Leggy]

They generally do get replaced on the mainlines by concrete ties, outside of the mainline it's anyone's guess....

[jereising]

Gentlemen, I stand corrected.  And I thank you for the education.

[nkalanaga]

ME has had "die problems" for years.  The last new track, both codes 40 and 55, that I bought was about 15 years ago, and it had enough flash that it needed trimming.  The plasdtic leaked out around the tops of the spikes, into the web of the rail, and produced lumps.  They actually looked almost like scale angle bars, but obviously weren't an intentional detail, and interfered with the flanges.  On pre-weathered track they weren't easily seen, and the only reason I noticed them was that cars which ran perfectly on the older RailCraft track "bumped".  A sharp knife solved the problem, but finding all of the flash took a while, especially on the back of the near rail, where it was hidden.

[DKS]

ME has had "die problems" for years.

Curiously, the RailCraft track had even bigger problems; the flash was horrendous in places. The ties might have "wandered" the same way, but then again, it was tooled with more irregular tie patterns, something I really liked and missed in the same way as the irregular spike patterns. The thought that went into the design outweighed the flaws and made it worth the work of trimming the flash on hundreds and hundreds of ties.

Twisting the odd tie here and there resulted in a great effect, especially when coupled with washed out roadbed--

[Baronjutter]

Woah that looks dangerous you need to get a crew out there to re-ballast.

[DKS]

Woah that looks dangerous you need to get a crew out there to re-ballast.

It's abandoned track, and it's modeled after reference photos of track that had its roadbed washed away over time.

[Iain]

Interestingly, the old NS had one line that was laid with concrete ties; most of them have been replaced by wood over the last fifteen years, or so.  This was on the Aurora branch; NS was very proud of that.  Somewhere, I have a photo of four Baldwins hauling a$$hat over that line, pulling a train load of phosphate.

Some of the old NS guys still living that worked that line talk about how the concrete ties would collect snakes at night because they held the heat.

[basementcalling]

ME flex isn't flex track so much as a long section of bendable track. If you use a printed template of your plan or a guide for radius formation the track is easy to work with.

I've never seen ME weathered concrete tie track offered.

The flash on my C55 concrete tie was obvious and in need of removal. It actually was large enough and stiff enough to cause a Kato C44 to derail on one spot when test running.

[DKS]

Please tell me you made sure not to get the pre-weathered stuff. That stuff is miserable. Otherwise, it's good track.

My understanding is that the finish does not allow the rail to slide through the ties very well, plus, as soon as you bend the track, the non-weathered spots under the spikes become visible, so you have to touch up the rails or paint the track anyway.

Funny thing... I was looking for a scrap of track to use as a dummy trolley line, and came across a stick of ME pre-weathered C55 flex. I started working with it--I have some pretty tight bends to make--and realized something. For one, it wasn't much worse to work with than non-weathered ME flex, and two, there were no unsightly spots of unweathered rail left where it slid past the spikes. So, I'm not entirely sure why it's gotten such a bad reputation; I think if I was to build a layout that called for flex, I'd be tempted to use it.

Here's a close-up of pre-weathered flex that's been bent back and forth several times, and the ties have moved around quite a bit...