Once more returning to the theme of sleepers (or ties) on LEGO track (see The art of LEGO railway track), I wondered whether I could make a passable representation of modern concrete sleepers, which frequently have a narrower, dipped central portion (and in some cases replace the centre entirely – with a steel bar connecting two separate pieces of concrete).
The central portion is often covered by ballast (the stones that hold the sleepers in place), and so I thought I’d try representing the sleeper disappearing under the ballast by using cheese slopes.
Whereas the 1-by-4 and 1-by-1 tiles favoured by most LEGO track builders can sit on top of the coarse sleepers of the track, and still lie 1 plate below the top of the rail, a cheese slope is a whole two plates high. The kind of thing I’d like to be able to achieve is shown on the left in the picture below, but it requires the use of separate plastic rails, and would completely break down for curves, let alone switches and crossings!
The other three examples here are shown with LEGO 9-volt track, which has pretty much the same dimensions as LEGO RC plastic track. In between the original sleepers, which are two-studs wide and spaced at four-stud centres, it’s possible to drop the cheese slopes down to the appropriate level, so that they sit at least a plate below the rail head.
The trouble is that unless we use a four-stud spacing for our sleepers (which is a bit of a stretch when it comes to maintaining scale), some of the cosmetic sleepers are going to coincide with the sleepers that are part of the track element. There’s no real option I can see other than to omit them in that case. It doesn’t look so bad for two- or three-stud spacing – the middle two options in the picture – and it may (or may not?) look more natural with occasional cheese slopes left out.
What do you think of these designs? Is it worth the extra effort, or should I stick to the tried-and-tested Penn LUG standard? I should emphasise that I haven’t tried this at all with real LEGO, and I can’t say if cheese slopes would be more likely than tiles to interfere with the flanges of LEGO train wheels. Do you have any alternative suggestions? Feel free to comment!
Happy Trans Day of Visibility! 🏳️⚧️
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