Rail Options for Minimum Gauge 

The 12 lb rail You mentioned is mine rail, this is the rail miners use. It comes in 8, 12 & 16 lb sizes with 12 being the most common.

I'm using the steel T-posts for rail right now. Instead of cutting grooves in the ties (sleepers), I've been cutting the nubs off the back of the T-posts with an angle grinder and a cutoff disk. I don't cut them all off, I just cut off the ones where they'll be sitting on the ties, based on my average tie spacing. My track is 7.5 inch gauge.

Strap rail might be worth considering if you have a comical amount of free wood. You could probably fix the snakehead issue by welding a piece at the end to hook under the wooden rail.

Thanks for your video, it was very informative and answered a lot of questions that I've been pondering myself. Cheers Greg

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Thanks for the comparison and contrast. I recently bought 8 foot tee posts at Menard’s for less than six dollars each and I think they would make affordable but light rails. I think with a hole drilled in the horizontal part of angle ,a heavy lag screw would hold pretty well. I think the smallest I beam I’ve seen is around 2” x 4”. It’d be nice if they made a mini I beam say 3/4” x 1 1/2”. Thanks again and looking forward to more of your projects.

Excellent Rail Orientation and metal strengths

Thank you for the comparison. I saw you pulling up old rail in a previous video and was surprised to see the fence post. I was happy to hear you elaborate on that more here. You very briefly mentioned flat bar, but did not mention the “groovy rail” system. It uses a 1 1/4 x 3/8 flat bar with preformed ties. It “feels” like a good choice for 7.25 and 7.5 gauge. Unfortunately I have no idea how it holds up in practice… Thanks again!

Excellent info. Many thanks.

This is an interesting and informative video. However, I was wondering if you've seen any of the videos that Way Out West Workshop has done about the 15" gauge railway that they've been building for their farm? They basically use long sections of bar stock for their rails, with sections of pipe driven into the sleepers & the bar stock bolted to it for the rails, and it seems to work pretty well for their purposes.

Have you looked into gantry crane rail at all? They use stuff pretty close to 1/4 scale rail. Like the big overhead cranes in big factories. I know people who live out west can find people that own abandoned mines and buy the mine cart track from them.

Additionally, I would recommend to treat ties/sleepers with some linseed oil with tar :-)

Great video...👍

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience :) Did you ever try applying heat to some of the ones that are difficult to bend? I assume that would help, at least a little.

How do you bend the channel iron (for curves)?

with the channel couldnt you drill holes in one of the channel walls and put spikes through one of the sides?

Where did you find the square washers you demonstrate at 7:06?

What do you think about using wider flat bar stock like 10x25mm (3/8 by 1 inch) with welded tabs on the bottom. That could yield better rolling behaviour right? No sharp corners at least like the angle or T profile.

For the smaller (9lbs), rail would larger diameter wood screws be a viable option? What about the shorter concrete anchors? Some of those can be over 1/2" thick and several inches long but would also provide the short head.

Question: i'm currently starting off my minimum gauge railway (19in gauge) and was thinking about using T fence posts as the track, but instead of having it in this position _|_ , like you showed, i'll have it like this T , and weld a plate at the bottom for each tie like you showed at 6:57 . I'm using lightweight/medium sized rolling stock, being build on original minecarts chassis (thus the 19in gauge). What's your opinion on this method?

Where does one go to find the rail seen at 11:12 I have researched them for quite some time but I’m not able to find them for some reason.

Steel bar of 25x50 is the best option not talking about 9Kg rails.

The echo makes it hard to listen.

you call it angle "IRON" it is not iron it is "STEEL"