@phrankenstign posted:I'm not sure blackening the middle rail does what you'd expect. There are many pictures I've seen of layouts where the rails have been blackened. In a lot of those pics, the darkened rail actually makes it stand out more!
Yes. When Lionel first came out with FasTrack it had a black center rail. Production of that was stopped when it became obvious than it made the center rail "stand out". When I first saw FasTrack at Nicolas Smith Trains around 2005, both were in stock, so I could compare them side by side. I bought the non-blackened version.
