Large Scale Central

Gargraves Track in a Yard....

Track and Trestles
#1

There were a lot of opinions put forward about Gargraves track in a recent discussion, including my mention that I was making an entire yard out of Gargraves track. Here are some pictures of what I’m doing in the semi-indoor section of my railroad, that is, the part under the large back porch.

Do me a big favor men. There were a few comments about how “ugly” Gargraves track is, how “unprototypical” the switches are, not to mention how the ties are too short and the profile not being high enough, etc.; do, please, tell me how you really think my yard is looking and what I might do to improve the appearance of the track.

The track, as well as the switches, are in various states of weathering. In the pictures where the track appears to be more or less finished I have:

  1. pushed and twisted the ties around for variety’s sake so they don’t look so regular,

  2. rusted the rails with paint leaving the rail heads silver,

  3. bleached the ties with clorox to a natural color because I think they are too dark out of the box, then added some stain color back including oil-drip staining in the middle of the tracks,

  4. added ties that I cut myself for the switch transitions and generally anywhere I thought it would look good, including making them longer than the original Gargraves ties, and

  5. painted the switches brown and grey because they are black plastic, which doesn’t look so great.

The ballast is mostly Chicken Grit broken up by my 12-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter with a steel crusher/tamper to a smaller size for appearances sake. Hardly any of the yard is ballasted yet though, and I didn’t get a good picture of the parts that are, so I’ll try to add a picture or two of that when I can. I should have done that dang it.

You see some pictures, also, of the track before I’ve had a chance to do much beyond bleach out the ties with clorox. Also, as mentioned in the other thread, there’ll be a problem with connecting the Gargraves track to regular stainless steel code 335 track, as you can see in the last couple of pictures I think.

So there you go. Give me your best shots. Like that coach said a while back…“Come after me! I’m forty! I’m a man!” (Okay, okay, okay, maybe I’m ways past forty.)

Thanks!

#2

OK you asked for an honest assessment. I am impressed. At the distance you are taking the picture, which is really about the distance it will be viewed, it looks really very good. The weathering your doing is making it look much better than stock photos of it. Add in with scenery details and it becomes part of a larger whole so your eye isn’t fixated on the non-prototypical elements especially the rail shape. What you doing to the ties for weathering and skewing is working. I think one its ballasted it will look even better.

OK it can’t all be positive, the ties are to short. That stuck out right away to me. When compaired to the 332 “normal” track there is a stark difference. But that is I think because of the lack of ballast. They just are prominent floating on the surface. once they are buried in ballast it will blend them in better I am thinking. Maybe a few “transition ties” that blend the length of the normal track to the Gargraves will help; five or six tapering down might really make a difference.

Overall though, for what the price is compared to other track it is in my opinion a very viable product for the indoor RR from the looks of it.

I give it a thumbs up!

Now how does it bend? Was it as easy as they make it look? Would you be able to bend it into a 24" diameter curve? If I were to use it, it would be on a Vic inspired micro.

What are your impressions of it as far a looks/installation/operation?

#3

Not bad at all, the lower rail does help minimize the tie non-length.

I bet if the ties weren’t mentioned, many would over look it because there is so much eye candy to enjoy! Nice to see The Door again!

More silk than sow.

John

#4

Thanks Devon. Your assessment is similar to mine as far as my judgement about how it’s coming along, but I’ve been needing a reality check beyond non-modellers (they like it at least!). It’s tough for me to be objective some times, especially when I’m constantly unfairly comparing my work to the guys with unlimited talent, time, money, and help! I think I should finish out a complete length of tracks to definitely nail down the end result and see how I feel about it then.

Operation-wise, the switches are just as bad as those damn Aristocraft switches that you have to modify to get them to stop picking wheels and derailing trains. No doubt about that. The primary Gargraves problem seems to be the same: the depth of the switch base is too shallow to let the flanges of the wheels travel along without forcing the wheels to ride up over the track. It really sucks. So far I’ve be able to get Aristocraft switches working, but in one direction only so far.

Gargraves is very flexible and very easy to work with. If you bend too fast or too much, though, it “crimps” or “buckles” (I can’t think of the right work) and then with it being hollow and so light you’re done…toss it out. One thing I can do that really can’t be done easily with bigger, solid Aristo/LGB/Etc track is that I can put some wavering in the track, short bends, that imitate the real rails I see where for some reason the track sort of waves.

I don’t know about bending it down to 24" because all my bends are pretty mild. I’ll take a length and give it a shot.

Thanks again.

#5

John Caughey said:

Not bad at all, the lower rail does help minimize the tie non-length.

I bet if the ties weren’t mentioned, many would over look it because there is so much eye candy to enjoy! Nice to see The Door again!

More silk than sow.

John

Thanks John…to tell you the truth, I never even thought about the rail height being non-prototypical until the other discussion got going. Now I can see what they’re saying, but, to me, one of my ideas for using Gargraves was that in yards the railroads used lighter, cheaper rail than on the main lines. Isn’t that true? So, actually, I imagined I was acting just like the real railroad.

#6

The rails look great. I am actually surprised at how good it does look. But my eye keeps catching on the ties being too short and they also look to be too close together. Maybe if they were spaced a bit further apart, it wouldn’t scream (to me) that something isn’t right.

#7

332 is only high speed mainline track, too big really, but I over look it for strength.

Rhymes with ink, k… from bend it Jumps to kinked faster than Oh Noooooooooooooooooooo can save the day.

In many yards the rails get tamped into the dirty ballast.

Yes to the smaller rail too.

What tie ends? Bring up the dirt.

John

#8

John Caughey said:

332 is only high speed mainline track, too big really, but I over look it for strength.

Rhymes with ink, k… from bend it Jumps to kinked faster than Oh Noooooooooooooooooooo can save the day.

In many yards the rails get tamped into the dirty ballast.

Yes to the smaller rail too.

What tie ends? Bring up the dirt.

John

“KINKED”…now that was the word I was looking for. I’m getting old…boo hiss. I think you’re on to something; ballast and bring up the ground and the shortness of the ties won’t be noticeable.

#9

p.s…that locomotive looks like it should CRUSH that rail.

#10

This is when the maximum allowable axle loading needs to be adhered to. (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)Who knows, maybe that locomotive is just under the limit for that rail.

#11

Much better than I expected.

#12

John’s picture was what I was thinking of when it came to ballast. Bury those ties and it will be a none issue. David mentioned being to close. Aren’t the ties individual? If so spacing I would think would be a matter of personal preference.

#13

Devon, one of the things I really like about the Gargraves track is that the ties are separate, as you point out. That means you can slide them around on the track or twist them slightly diagonally, giving you an irregular line-up of ties. I think that looks good myself. You can see in the third picture from the bottom where I have varied the spacing of the ties. Being able to move the ties also means that you don’t have to have the predictable and regular gaps in ties where pieces of tracks are joined and in the middle of tracks, like you see in a lot of commercial track. Also, with the Gargraves it’s easy to add ties that you can cut yourself out of pine or any other woodstock.

I use too many ties. I know that on bridges the railroads use a lot of ties per section of track, and that in yards they use a few as they possibly can; but, me, I just like a lot of ties and the way it looks, even if it isn’t prototypical. I wouldn’t bury the ties in any of the various on-hand, cheap materials railroads use in their yards either, again because I like ties! (Not usually dress ties, though!) I’ll definitely bring the ground up some in my yard as you all have suggested and when I finish with the ballasting, I’ll see how things look then.

I thought the one think I would get harshly criticized for is the lack of representation of tieplates and spikes in the Gargraves track, but maybe it isn’t that noticeable. I was thinking of “spiking” the ties if it started bothering me, but I wouldn’t know what to do about tieplates; there’s really no way I know of to add them to Gargraves track.

#14

In HO scale, when I painted my rails, I masked off the ties with a gap, a little of the tie unmasked near the rails. Then when I spray painted the rails my rust colour, I also got a patch of rust colour on the ties, simulating the tie plates. Its not a perfect representation, but most folks don’t study the ties close enough to notice that the tie plates are just painted on.

#15

John you’d have to spike half plates on either side of the rail … but I thought this yard was half hidden?

This photo sez your ties are too long!

John

#16

Those would be transfer table rails there…

#17

Well that takes the fun out of it…

I was trying to make John feel better about his ties…

Oh well.

So folks know what you mean.

John

#18

Sorry John, I didn’t mean to mess up your post.

#19

I was only funnin’.

John

#20

I know