Talking to John on the phone a couple of days ago…when he removed the screws holding the track to thr “roadbed”, the track jumped back out to a bigger circle, but the road bed stayed put.
The slip joiners would have allowed the rails to pull back had it been only the track.
Llagas is SUPPOSED to have the rails tight in the ties.
That’s what allows it to “hold” a curve.
John is checking further.
Won’t leaving a screw in the middle of a curve cause problems when the weather warms up and the track expands? Mine floats completely and when we had hot desert weather for several days one summer the middle of my large curve actually shifted outward six inches!
No.
Unless you use clamps.
Mine, I set in summer sun tight joint…in winter cold, I get about a 1/8" gap end of the 6’ sections.
ALL of mine is attached, keeps maintenance of track LOW.
Of course, when it’s been on the ground longer than two weeks, maybe experience will tell me different…
Talked to one of my operators tonight, he has the same type issue with roadbed.
The uprights actually curved, did not disrupt the soil (as in, no external forces “pulling” the roadbed).
The PVC shrunk.
He is going to try the slip-joint I recoomended to John.
Ain’t the track.
One other operator, an architect, says that stuff is not stable in cold weather.
Don’t know.
Oh, forgot to say…brass 332 track on all of this one, no clamps.
John,
I had the same problem, I think the plastic contracts a lot when it gets cold. I took all the screws out from the bottom of the track and added some expiation rails. We see this winter if it helps.
Don
PVC expand and contract ? You betcha ! Here’s a photo of the bottom of a PVC clad steel porch post. At 75 degrees or above the plastic will be in firm contact with the porch floor, the photo taken at 35 degrees shows that it has shrunk over 3/8" at one end or 3/4" total over an 8’ length. I also have PVC gutters and downspouts. The gutter section couplers are designed to function as expansion / contraction joints. Over time if one side fits tighter than the other they will uncouple themselves. Also if you look at the brackets that hold the down spouts to the house you can see that over a years worth of temperature change the downspout moves around an inch in relation to the bracket and that’s over a ten foot length. I was considering trying this method but I may decide to reconsider.
Just to keep it going, I haven’t done anything to the road bed, everything is working well. I plan to wait for the hot months to see what the PVC does in the heat, as in return to it’s original position, and then devise a scheme to fix the problem. Thanks for the input.
JN
