Quick and Easy Expert Tips for Laying Flex Track

Today we're gonna talk about laying flex track on a model railroad. This is the next step up for many model railroaders from the sectional track that most of us get started with, building those small four by eight layouts and that kind of thing. The beauty of flex track is that you can bend it any which way you want to. And so, you're not restricted to the curve sizes that come with sectional track. Now, if we look at this flex track, this is HO flex track made by Atlas Model Railroad Company. Very typical of what's out there. We can see that on one side, the bottom side here of the tie strip, the plastic is cast in a solid piece. If we look at the top, we can see that there are spaces between every second tie. Generally, we wanna make the rail joints in the flexible track on a straight section. It's just a lot easier to do. It also makes a better connection. You want as few joints as possible in a curve because each joint introduces the opportunity for a derailment, or a little kink, or a little bit of a problem. And we just run a small bead down the middle, right along the center line for the cork road bed. We don't need very much. And in fact, we don't wanna have too much because you don't want it, the adhesive to work up between the ties. Well, we're gonna, there's nothing to this. We're gonna lay this piece on this curve section. Let's look at what we have so far. You can see that the rail here is sticking out about a quarter of an inch further than the other rail. To fix this problem, we'll use a pair of rail nippers. This is a very important tool for model railroaders. If you're going to be laying much track all, that you have yourself a good pair of rail nippers. They're a very good investment. Once you've bought them, use them only to cut rail. Don't use them to be cutting other things. All right, anytime you wanna cut rail, get the plastic out of the way first, so that you're just making a clean cut on the rail. In order to be able to slide our rail joiner on here, we need to get rid of a couple of these ties. And the way I do that is to take an X-Acto knife, cut up through the bottom of the tie strip like this, and then we'll just take a hold of these last two ties, and pull them off. This rail slid a little bit on it, so we'll just have to shove it back. And we wanna take a small file, and we'll just dress these cut edges a little bit. This is, the bottom part's called the base. We wanna file that, on that surface, on the other surface, top of the base, so that we won't have any problems sliding the rail joiner on. There, now we have finished dressing the end of that rail and we're ready to a slip on a rail joiner so that we can attach the next piece of rail. Well, now we're ready to do the adjoining piece of track. We'll need to put down some of our adhesive again. We've got our adhesive in place. We'll get these started. At the end, started in the rail joiners, and then we'll take our pliers. And we don't wanna grip the joiner itself. We wanna grip outside of it and use the pliers as a tool to shove the joiners on. So, those are the basics of working with flexible track. Remember, flexible track allows you to build curves in any radius that you want, gives you fewer rail joints. Fewer rail joints means fewer derailments. I hope you'll enjoy working with flexible track and I know it can help you build a better layout.