Storing Rail
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m going to be hand-building turnouts for the new layout, and possibly also hand-laying some of the track, although I’ll mostly use flex-track. But this means that I need to buy bulk rail. I’ve actually done this in the past, and one of the problems I’d had was that rail is easily bent. And once bent, it’s generally not usable. I needed a place to store rail where it could be kept straight. And I was likely to have more than one rail type or size, so I also needed a means to keep the different kinds separate.
A friend suggested PVC pipe, which turned out to be a very good idea. A quick trip to the local hardware super-store revealed that 3/4” PVC pipe looked like a good size for storing a bundle of rail, and it comes in ten-foot lengths, which evenly subdivides into 40” lengths that will hold either 36” or one-meter (39.37”) lengths of rail. The store would even cut it for me. A solid cap on one end, and a threaded fitting on the other with a screw-on cap completed the design. I’ll probably eventually build a wood frame or rack to hold several of these tubes on a shelf or wall.
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A friend suggested PVC pipe, which turned out to be a very good idea. A quick trip to the local hardware super-store revealed that 3/4” PVC pipe looked like a good size for storing a bundle of rail, and it comes in ten-foot lengths, which evenly subdivides into 40” lengths that will hold either 36” or one-meter (39.37”) lengths of rail. The store would even cut it for me. A solid cap on one end, and a threaded fitting on the other with a screw-on cap completed the design. I’ll probably eventually build a wood frame or rack to hold several of these tubes on a shelf or wall.
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