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Salvaging old track

Hello

I am about to move my old layout to a new location and have just started lifting track. The track in the fiddle yard and unballasted areas is not the problem but when I reach areas that are ballasted it is very hard to lift the track without damaging it I find.

I'm sure there are contributors here must have gone through this before me so what do you do? Sweat away and try and lift all the old track, abandon it all or somewhere in-between - e.g saving the turnouts and crossings?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Alex

Reply to
Alex
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"Alex" wrote in news:46b8b490$0$31726$ snipped-for-privacy@news.zen.co.uk:

Save the points if you can and scrap the rest.

Warm water with a little washing up liquid to loosen the glue - assuming you have't used waterproof stuff.

Reply to
Chris Wilson

I always ballast using diluted PVA glue. Spraying the track with a mist of water at about 12 hour intervals for a couple of days softens the PVA and ballast sufficiently to lift the rail and assorted sleepers using a big wood chisel etc etc. From there I have had many happy hours sorting rail lengths and cutting and sliding sleepers to get like new (well, extremely used) lengths of track. Two cartons hold 'over half' length and 'under half' length sections of track and odd bits of rail. It's still amazing how often I don't have a piece of track long enough to fill any given gap without cutting a piece in half!

Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

I've always ballasted using wallpaper paste and tea leaves as it looks nice and dirty. When I want to rip up the track, sliding a normal table knife under the track releases it and the ballast can be poked out with a screwdriver. The track rarely if ever gets damaged and the ballast holds down well in normal use.

Reply to
Gerald H

Many thanks for the help guys!

Reply to
Alex

Hi Alex,

we've already made the mistakes - we may not know the correct answer but we do know how to do it wrong!

Regards, Greg.P.

Reply to
Greg Procter

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