Model Railway Forum

Hello,

I have some old track, must be 30 years old. Should I bin it and buy new Nickle Silver track?
I've been told I'll spend ages cleaning it and the curves are likely too tight to run the newer larger loco's.

What's the forums thoughts on this?

Dave & Luke

Go for the new track and use new points too - second hand can be very unreliable - you don’t know how much abuse they’ve had.

Bin it is my view too. You will never get 100% satisfactory running on old track that has steel rail.

Bugger, thought that might be the case. I did have a closer look just now and it’s quite rusty.
Thanks

I'm with the others on the idea of using steel as running rails... however, you can still use it for decoration and detailing... there are always spare rails rusting away along a railway line... you can pull the rails from the chairs, and use the sleepers to represent disused lines or separate them and resuse them as other things. (coaling stages, walkways & bufferstops spring to mind.)

Anything to keep more going to landfill...

Ohh, great idea!

A quick question on this if I may?

I’ve been given a decent amount of track and I’d like to use it if possible in order to save money, but it’s going to live in a location which may occasionally become more damp than would be ideal, so I’m not going to use it if it’s steel. But how do it I tell? Is it as simple as popping a magnet on? I know it’ll stick to steel, but I’m not sure of the metallurgy of nickel silver? I’m assuming that NS is non-ferrous and therefore won’t be attracted by a magnet.

A magnet is all you need.

Perfect, thank you - I knew my background in physics would come in handy one day

Steel rail the magnet attracts. Nickel Silver rail the magnet won't attract to it.