Building an HO layout -- helper district with tight curves, 4 levels, and 4 sections which will be portable. Using fiber tie flextrack and Atlas #4 turnouts with plastic ties (have these on hand).
Track attachment is critical for secure alignment on many curves & section joints. Need actual experience with the following:
1. Anyone experienced warping fiber ties due to moisture or water-based glue?
2. If so, how best to seal fiber ties to prevent water damage?
3. I heard that shellac could provide sealing but it’s messy…anything better that might seal ties & glue ballast?
4. Need stable, easy-to-curve, thin track subroadbed (3 inch vertical clearances)… maybe felt insulation, Mortite rope caulk rolled flat (saw in a forum posting), latex caulk? Cork seems to dry out and Woodland Scenics foam squishes unevenly by spiking.
5. Would shellac or other sealer/ballast glue attack or damage any of these?
Thanks for any help!
Why are you still using that old track with fiber ties? Keeping those ties from curling up and disentegratring when they get wet from ballasting and scenery makes it next to worthless.
Ok I thought I was missing something in the O/P that stuff hasn't been around for I don't know how long so if you need more of it where do you plan on finding it?
The wonders of modern Chemistry called plastics virtually nothing with the exception of my soldering iron harms the ties, even the hand laying group use PC board ties along with their wood ties.Using fiber ties is just asking for problems.
Thinking only about appearance, there is no way that shellac-covered fiber ties a foot wide will ever resemble the eight inch wide preservative-soaked wood ties under 1:1 scale rails. (Won't even comment about concrete ties, which are becoming ever more common.)
Fiber tie flex was the state of an immature art when I first bought it over half a century ago. I rather suspect that yours has brass rail as well. Since the staples holding the rail to the ties are iron you might encounter a problem with galvanic corrosion after using some kinds of dye or other spray liquids in their vicinity. (Encountered this on a layout built close to the Atlantic in Wrightsville Beach, NC.)
It might be less hassle all around to simply retire the fiber-tie flex and substitute its modern plastic-tie equivalent. I have long since retired mine, and recycled the rails as guard rails on hand-laid specialwork and in other places where brass rail has cosmetic value. It's the old, "Pay me now, (for plastic-tie flex) or pay me later," (for the problems of using the fiber-tie in a wet, possibly corrosive, environment.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)