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Reply to "American Flyer 727 Curved Rubber Roadbed and Track With "Sharp As Nails" Track Pins - Can Anyone Identify These Items?"

banjoflyer posted:
Dennis GS-4 N & W No. 611 posted:

Interestingly, I brought the roadbed to the local hobby store, since I wanted it to be preserved if the roadbed could be useful to an AF aficionado. The first question asked was "Do you have any straights?"  When I said no, he indicated that the only reason he bought curves from someone was to get the straight sections of the roadbed.  He has plenty of straights.

 

Did you mean to say he had plenty of curved sections? And wanted straights?

This is the typical thing about AF track and the rubber roadbed. There were most likely three times as many curves as straights available for resale. Why? Because sets were usually sold with track to run the trains. Included would be 12 curves (to make a circle) and maybe 4 straights (to change the circle into an oval).

Layout builders were always searching for the straight sections to make long straightaways and re-sellers sometimes charged a lot more for the straight sections. The same probably goes for the roadbed as you would need 3X as many curves as the straights to make the oval.

Finding straight sections of the roadbed is a bit harder to do.

Mark

Thanks Mark.  I did mean to say that the hobby store owner had plenty of curved sections, and amended my above post.  Your explanation as to why there is a shortage of AF straight track and AF straight roadbed makes perfect sense.  Was that more likely to occur with AF track because a large percentage of Postwar AF sales involved sets rather than individual track sections?  I don't recall a similar problem with Lionel  O-27 or O gauge track.

Last edited by Dennis GS-4 N & W No. 611

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