Thanks Jesse, this one wasn't even my imagination, since I had been looking at the monster quad for years. It was on my to do list for a long time, but yesterday it got "to done".
Dave, I don't own a torch, just did it with my soldering station. Full process described below.
D&H, the only problem that might come up using the 452 would be, that it is cut off at that angle on the end. I'm not sure if that little bit of lower girder would have to be added back. Back in the day, that was a rather sought after piece, until Lionel reproduced it. You know, it would work perfectly to take two 450's and make and make a triple track and have a 452 leftover. This project technically used three 450's to make two triples, with two legs to spare. I never throw anything away, they're in a box somewhere, I saw them a couple years ago.
How to info for everyone: I made the cut with tin snips, then used the small yellow handle needle nose pliers to straighten the bent bits back up. I used my bench top belt sander to clean up the cut end of the piece to be spliced. The other cut end was capped off by the leg piece and was hidden.
I took my Dremel and put a sanding drum in it and removed the paint, getting nice shiny metal, on the inside of the upper and lower platforms, then soldered on small brass strips. Then I cleaned the paint from the other side to be joined, and turned it into one piece. With the alignment set, I just filled in the small gaps with solder, and used the Dremel to knock down the excess.
This was just a quick and dirty project. I'm sure there are much more refined ways of doing this. But, like I said, a little paint and a lot of signal heads to distract the eye, you'll never notice the imperfections.
