Salvaging old track

"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.

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.

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.

Many thanks for the help guys!

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.