Wood sleepers

[hornbeam]

Ok, so fingers crossed the house , we have sold our house and the new one has a nice large garden.

The 45mm part will be live steam and battery and I have a mostly LGB and peco track.

Im thinking about selling the LGB on as its overscale and going for a good price ( about £ per foot?) I may also get rid of the peco and am thinking about using Brandbright wood sleepers with either flat bottom or bullhead rail.

first question. Am I mad?! and does anyone have wood sleeper track? does it last ok if on a drained trackbed? much up-keep involved?

Simon

 

[tramcar trev]

There was a thread in the forum somewhere re a chap (in Australia from memory) who laid his track on treated pine sleepers. Treated pine would be fairly serviceable externally, that's what its intended for.

 

[maxi-model]

I suppose it is down to your priorities. Do you want prototypical realism or convenience and easy resale ?

I have mostly LGB with some handmade GRS wood sleepered trackwork. These latter specialised (Y points/ crossovers) items get a regular annual dolop of wood preservative to minimise the risk of their disintegration over time. Even with good drainage unless you have long periods pf drought the undersides of your sleepers will remain damp and prone to rot unless properly treated.

I assume from your statment regarding use of live steam/battery power that the issue of conductive properties of the rails are not an issue - possibility of using cheaper alternatives to brass rail then ?

I did here a wisper yesterday that your proposed wood supplier had made the recent decision to sell up/sell on the business at some point - if you are building in stages you will need to make sure you have the continuity of supply of the specialised materials you will require.

Max

 

[hornbeam]

Hi Max,

Thanks. I hope Brandbright don't sel up as I really do like them. I know Roger has been ill and ive delt with new people there on the phone a few weeks ago.

I want something a lot more scale and a bit of maintance wont be a massive issue, and these days its the rail thats the expensive part. Cliff baker makes stainless steel rail so thats a poss to use. I may even use gauge 1 plastic sleepers at a wider spacing. Id like flat bottom, but the rail height with chairs is to low for LGB size flanges so pinned sleepers would be the only option.

 

[beavercreek]

There is always Tenmille........

 

[hornbeam]

Thats what I was thinking. cost a little more and will need treating.

 

[Dtsteam]

Apart from the fact that the novelty of threading chairs onto the rail will wear off after the second length, there are a couple of other considerations...
- if you have a lot of LGB track, and sell it, then its probably a one way door, in that most of us would struggle to replace our track if we sold it. Why not invest in the components to build and lay , say, 5 metres of track and a point to really see if it works for you before selling your track.
- make sure you enjoy building track - you could be spending a lot of time doing it .

 

[vannerley]

My instinct is that maintenance levels are about the same whatever kind of trackwork is used. I came from a strictly model railway background, once my 7mm n.g. track has been built it stays built - but not in the garden. We have had two major relaying sessions with our LGB track (the end of the line southern reversing loop, 0.24 in the video, and the long Koudekerke bank, 1.12 after the bridge), I admit I was surprised to have to do it at all ... but then it dawned on me that the other railway (on an embankment at the bottom of the garden) are forever tinkering with their track.