ME Pre-Weathered Track

[Bre2tSco2t]

I purchased 6 pieces of ME code 70 weathered track to try on a siding or two. Code 70 because I thought it would look better next to my code 83 mainline. Weathered to see how good it looked and if it would save me time later on. Well, when it arrived it looked to me like the "weathering” is carried over the top of the rail as well. Does this have to be cleaned off before trains will run on it? Thanks in advance for the help.[8D]

Bre2tSco2t
MGB - Where Life is nothing but fun!

[tstage]

Bre2tSco2t,

If the weathering has "carried over" to the top of the rail, then you will probably need to use a BriteBoy to remove any of the overspray that is on the rail surface. Boy, you spend good money to pay for someone else to do the job for you and this is what you get? That's disappointing to hear.

Tom

[Bre2tSco2t]

Tom,

"Carried over" may be a poor choice of words. The rails do NOT have a shiny top. The tops are as brown as the sides are. I scratched a little on one end to see if I could get to shinny and I did. Before doing this along the whole rail, I wanted to check with others to see if this is common place.

If you have to clean the rail tops on pre-weathered track then I guess its a choice of painting later or cleaning tops later.

Bre2tSco2t
MGB - Where life is nothing but fun!

[Anonymous]

All my ME weathered track looks as you describe. Mine runs just fine without a brite boy. You might run some just to see. I generally avoid the weathered stuff because it is hard to get solder to stick to it. I buy un-weathered and then paint. I believe they are using a chemical blackener (browner in this case) agent that isn't like paint. I think it's conductive properties are better than if you had paint on the rails.

[Adelie]

The weathering on top of the rails comes off with a brite boy easily enough. You will want to clean it off the tops, if for no other reason than real rails are shiny on top from being "polished" by the wheels of passing trains. The rails on seldom-used sidings are rusted on tops, too.

Guy is right, they weather it with a chemical blackener (that is available by itself for weathering stuff).

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Adelie

The weathering on top of the rails comes off with a brite boy easily enough. You will want to clean it off the tops, if for no other reason than real rails are shiny on top from being "polished" by the wheels of passing trains. The rails on seldom-used sidings are rusted on tops, too.

Guy is right, they weather it with a chemical blackener (that is available by itself for weathering stuff).

One correction: Rail that is subject to constant use is shiny on top. Rail on a siding that gets switched out once a month is likely to be rusty on top. So, it depends on what you want to model: a mainline with heavy traffic or a seldom-used spur. By the way, a spur that sees daily switching traffic will be shiny on top. So, I would use the Bright Boy on all mainline, yard, and heavily used spurs, but I would try to leave one spur that gets little traffic "rusty" on top. That might provide an interesting contrast.

IMHO, the reported tendency of ME pre-weathered rail to be hard to solder to is a source of potential problems. I would be very careful to clean the places where I wanted to solder to the rail. However, that could be an advantage, since the weathering provides a solder resist to help keep solder from places where you don't want it go go.

[selector]

I agree with cleaning the most often used rails. You could experiment a bit and clean the main part of the yard, but clean less the further 'in' to the yard you go....sort of an analogy to its use. So, the most frequently used track, say once a week, would be quite clean, but the last segment would be covered in rust.

I hope that helps.