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Using the re-railer on ballasted track


John208

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Hi.  I ask this question with some trepidation!  As a complete novice I've just started to ballast my track, starting, just in case, with a small length of siding.  Having done so, it struck me that I could no longer use the Hornby re-railer on that section of ballasted track, so before I continue to ballast I thought I'd ask.  At present I intend to leave some sidings un-ballasted, but I'd like to know what the experienced advice is.

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A friend of mine, who is 3mm only, was talking about this for his exhibition layouts last October at Gaydon, so, I sent him a Hornby one and within an hour or so of receiving it the rerailer works on any ballasted track. From what I remember it did not take too much to modify.

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I usually only use re-railers in my fiddleyard (unballasted track).    I guess it you need to use it over ballasted track then it'll depend on how wide your ballast extends beyond the sleepers, you may need to remove some of the outside "lip" of the re-railer and also the locating lip at the very front?    
If you use the time honoured methods of ballasting including the trick of tapping the rails with the ballasting shovel (eg tea-spoon!) to literally "bounce" loose grains off the tops of the sleepers before gluing then you shouldn't have any problems with the main floor of the re-railer not sitting flat on the track. 

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Thanks to all for the helpful advice.  I think I'll need to 'adapt' the re-railer and be more careful in my application of ballast.  It's all an interesting learning experience!

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I adapted mine quite easily. as it was a while back, I cant recall exactly what I did .. but I do recall it only took a minute or two with a Dremel type tool 😄

Here is a pic of the item in question, look at the underside of a stock one and it should become clear what I removed 😊

 

20240318_212826[1].jpg

20240318_212848[1].jpg

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