How come no one makes plain ordinary steel rail for us Batt/Rc users?
What’s the deal with all this aluminum, brass alloy and stainless for that matter?
I would love to have rusty old steel rails on my layout and let the rolling stock “polish the rail-head.”
jb
The problem is that the rail head does not get polished, it stays rusty.
There was a large HO layout here in San Diego that had steel rail. Every train had a track cleaning car with a block of “bright boy” rubbing on the rails continuously.
Remember that patches of rust are not similarly reduced in size because of your scale.
(Just like people using scale ballast, the raindrops are not reduced to scale and the ballast washes out)
Regards, Greg
You are correct, Greg.
But wouldn’t it be nice to have steel rail.
Us modelers do everything we can to kit-bash, scratch and whatever to make our stuff look more “realistic”.
Then go plunk it down on rails made of other-than-steel metal.
Don’t worry about rusting away. Unless you submerged it.
Take a look at the Titanic. Been there for almost a hunnert years and not gone yet! (but admittedly looking pretty bad.)
I’ve dug up old draft-horse shoes in my back forty when it was farmed years ago, and with a little wire brushing, they were as good as new.
jb
That’s why I like stainless rail with painted sides. Looks about as real as we can get, with the exception of size. If I started out battery r/c I probably wouldn’t have spent the premium price for SS, but I really dislike the look of brass rail. I’m even slowly replacing most of the indoor loop with stainless only because of looks. John - Just buy up a bunch of Bachman track and keep replacing it as it rusts through 
I on the other hand have been using Gargraves G gauge tin-plated track and this year as usual I have to remove the badly rusted ones but taking out three footers is easy. Long ago I had about 400 pieces of 3 footers forced upon me for $30 and it sure was worth every cent. You know even the rusty ones are okay until the holes start to show up for I only run live steam !!! You version might be different.
Cheers,
There was a fellow in San Diego that used steel rail on his outdoor layout. It was featured in GR quite a number of years ago when he first built it. I believe it still had the steel rails during the convention. Not long ago it was featured again in GR and it was mentioned that all the steel rails were being replaced because the were rusting away. And this was in San Diego, not known for it’s wet climate.
It’s been a long time since inorganic chemistry in college, but rust is iron oxide. The reason the Titanic is still in relatively large pieces is that there is very little in the way of dissolved oxygen at that depth to make rust! The constant wet/dry cycles that steel-railed track would be subject to would destroy it rather quickly!
Brian
Ken Brunt said:
There was a fellow in San Diego that used steel rail on his outdoor layout. It was featured in GR quite a number of years ago when he first built it. I believe it still had the steel rails during the convention. Not long ago it was featured again in GR and it was mentioned that all the steel rails were being replaced because the were rusting away. And this was in San Diego, not known for it’s wet climate.
Hey Ken, In my layout i have some stainless track, and interesting to see that it rusts a bit, but not so bad that i would have to remove it. The interesting part is that my track was sold as stainless, what ever that means. When the initial rust was removed, it staid clean for a long time. So far i have no clue why this track is rusting initially, but when it is cleaned it stays clean. By the way it is European track, sold by Semaphore. Think Global Pius here a picture, which should confirm what i said
(http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u175/Rigibahn/100_2375.jpg)
Brian said:
It's been a long time since inorganic chemistry in college, but rust is iron oxide. The reason the Titanic is still in relatively large pieces is that there is very little in the way of dissolved oxygen at that depth to make rust! The constant wet/dry cycles that steel-railed track would be subject to would destroy it rather quickly!Brian
So, I would like to find some rusty paint, I guess.
jb
The rust patches do not necessarily scale down! So pits in scale steel rail would be huge compared to the relative size in the prototype.
On PJ’s post: there is sometimes a situation where the production process uses steel dies and or rollers and some of the steel is transferred to the surface of the stainless rail. When this happens, you may get some initial surface rust, but once it goes away, it does not come back, because the small amount of “normal” steel on the surface is now gone.
Another thing is that stainless will rust when exposed to certain contaminents, chlorine will do it. Sometimes people get something on the rails once and see a problem.
Regards, Greg
Greg,
In addition to particles from the rolling dies there will also be a slight “scale” on the rail from the rolling process. Very similar to what’s on proto rail, depending on the type of SS that will rust more or less. BTW there have been complaints in Europe about certain SS rusting, then that supplier changed to a different grade which didn’t rust and now the “super-proto” guys were bitching that they needed to weather/rust the rail. One can’t win!
Greg Elmassian said:
The rust patches do not necessarily scale down! So pits in scale steel rail would be huge compared to the relative size in the prototype.On PJ’s post: there is sometimes a situation where the production process uses steel dies and or rollers and some of the steel is transferred to the surface of the stainless rail. When this happens, you may get some initial surface rust, but once it goes away, it does not come back, because the small amount of “normal” steel on the surface is now gone.
Another thing is that stainless will rust when exposed to certain contaminents, chlorine will do it. Sometimes people get something on the rails once and see a problem.
Regards, Greg
-thanks for the input, yes the track was laid on the ground right next to Pool pump, and yes i backwashed few times, chlorinated water might touched that track. Just remembered the trouble where indoor pools had trouble with steel reinforced concrete. if i remembered they have to use stainless grade reinforcing steel mesh, and it still was a problem due to chlorine and moist.
-For the other possibility you mentioned, where steel particles where transfered while rolled. I guess for the amount of rust i see, there would be lots of steel removed during that rolling, such high amount that the rollers would not live for long. Knowing a bit about metal and mechanics, i could image that for such rollers a high grade alloy tool steel is used, something with a fine grain, and something which can be hardened. I have a hard time to image that such hard Tool steel would rub off to much material.
best regards Pius
There are numerous ‘types’ of stainless steel, with each type formulated for specific properties such as ease of fabrication, machinability, weldability, atmospheric corrosion resistance, etc. These types range from 100 Series austenitic chromium-nickel-manganese alloys to 600 Series martensitic precipitation hardening alloys, to Type 2205 duplex ferritic/austenitic alloy. The term ‘stainless steel’ covers many, many alloys, and the performance of each alloy will be unique to that alloy.
The two most common types are the 300 Series austenitic chromium-nickel alloys and the 400 Series ferritic and martensitic chromium alloys. Generally speaking, the 300 series (types 304 & 316 are the most common) have excellent corrosion resistance, with no visible ‘rusting’ when exposed to atmospheric moisture. They are relatively hard to fabricate, with specialized cutting and welding required.
Some of the type 400 series have a higher iron content (thus the name “ferritic”), with many of them being slightly magnetic. These materials are somewhat easier to fabricate and to perform special manufacturing operations such as hardening. Use in cutlery is one example of type 400 SS. Many 400 series stainless steels also exhibit a higher degree of effect from atmospheric corrosion: Some say they ‘rust’.
On a relative scale, all stainless steel alloys are significantly less effected by atmospheric corrosion than corresponding steel alloys, but it is very possible to find some ‘rust’ on stainless steel.
Happy RRing,
Jerry
Jerry Bowers said:
There are numerous ‘types’ of stainless steel, with each type formulated for specific properties such as ease of fabrication, machinability, weldability, atmospheric corrosion resistance, etc. These types range from 100 Series austenitic chromium-nickel-manganese alloys to 600 Series martensitic precipitation hardening alloys, to Type 2205 duplex ferritic/austenitic alloy. The term ‘stainless steel’ covers many, many alloys, and the performance of each alloy will be unique to that alloy. The two most common types are the 300 Series austenitic chromium-nickel alloys and the 400 Series ferritic and martensitic chromium alloys. Generally speaking, the 300 series (types 304 & 316 are the most common) have excellent corrosion resistance, with no visible ‘rusting’ when exposed to atmospheric moisture. They are relatively hard to fabricate, with specialized cutting and welding required. Some of the type 400 series have a higher iron content (thus the name “ferritic”), with many of them being slightly magnetic. These materials are somewhat easier to fabricate and to perform special manufacturing operations such as hardening. Use in cutlery is one example of type 400 SS. Many 400 series stainless steels also exhibit a higher degree of effect from atmospheric corrosion: Some say they ‘rust’. On a relative scale, all stainless steel alloys are significantly less effected by atmospheric corrosion than corresponding steel alloys, but it is very possible to find some ‘rust’ on stainless steel. Happy RRing, Jerry
hey Jerry, your statement is right on the spot, look at the chart. by the way, i use mostly 303 stainless, today with carbide and M42HSS, it is no problem to work with 303. think global Pius Improved Machinability Grades Recently a number of manufacturers have offered “Improved Machinability” versions of the standard austenitic Grades 304 and 316. These steels are produced by proprietary steel melting techniques which provide enough of a chip-breaking effect to significantly improve the machinability, but they still remain within the standard grade composition specifications and still retain mechanical properties, weldability, formability and corrosion resistance of their standard grade equivalents. These materials are marketed under trade names such as “Ugima”. For “Ugima” the improvement in achievable machining speed is about 20% over the equivalent standard grades; in addition it is commonly experienced that greatly enhanced tool life is obtained, which considerably reduces the cost of machining. In many instances this is of greater benefit than is the improvement in cutting speed. A “Ugima 303” is available as a “super-machinable” grade; like other 303 stainless steels weldability, formability and corrosion resistance are compromised in order to achieve maximum machinability. Relative machinabilities of various stainless steels, expressed as comparison of achievable cutting speeds, are shown in the graph of figure 2. Figure 2. Relative machinability ranges (in orange) of stainless steels
(http://www.azom.com/work/8EL4tFEqRFH492kRx25m_files/image003.gif)
