Code 25 Rail?!?

The Black River and Western railroad in New Jersey has been and will forever remain the strongest prototype influence on my model railroading. Another source of inspiration is the New Hope and Ivyland in Pennsylvania, a very photogenic line that I've photographed and videotaped more than any other. The more I studied these two railroads, the more I wanted to simulate the light rail on which the trains ran. While it looks delicate in comparison to other commercial N Scale track, Code 40 still represents fairly heavy rail. I was after the appearance of 60- to 70-pound rail. How could I possibly achieve this effect?

After considering any number of solutions, including "burying" normal rail in slotted ties, I finally settled on the idea of using flat wire, which is often used by modelers in the United Kingdom. But why flat wire? At that small size, it is very difficult to discern the profile of the "rail," and custom-manufacturing properly-shaped wire would have been prohibitively costly. As it was, finding nickel-silver flat wire of a specific size turned out to be next to impossible, and I wound up having to order custom-made wire measuring 0.015 wide by 0.025 high, or the equivalent of Code 25 rail.

When it came time to place the order, I had to think hard: Was this really the way I wanted to go? They sold the wire by weight, and the minimum order was ten pounds, at a cost of $300. Sounds expensive, but if you add up the cost of commercial track, including switches, for a good-sized layout, you'd probably be spending a fair bit more, so it's really not as bad as it sounds. Still, ten pounds of 0.015 by 0.025 wire was over 7,000 feet! With virtually no other workable options presenting themselves, I took the plunge.

Days after the spool was delivered to my apartment, I started work on a "proof of concept" Code 25 turnout using Randy Gordon-Gilmore's railroad turnout drawings. I figured that if I couldn't make a functional turnout, it wasn't worth pursuing the flat wire approach (and my next challenge would be what to do with 7,000 feet of flat wire). As it happens, I was able to make the functional Number 6 switch shown here with considerably less effort than I'd anticipated. The only catch is that I can only use the finest-flanged wheelsets from Northwest ShortLine on my rolling stock—which is fine by me, as I was planning on using them anyway.

Click the images along the left for detailed views and descriptions, or use these links:

• Code 25 switchpoints
• Code 25 frog and guardrails
• Fine flanges
• Flat wire basics
• Skeleton car

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