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Subject: 
Re: Strange rails
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:46:38 GMT
Viewed: 
9558 times
  
In lugnet.trains, Jason J Railton wrote:
> In lugnet.trains, Beat Felber wrote:
> > Hello Train Experts
> > 
> > Just recently I bought some 70s bulk material containing homemaker figures,
> > steered trucks and the like as well as some 4.5V and early 12V train stuff.
> > 
> > Usually one expects to find blue rails with old 4.5V stuff. I did so but I also
> > found 40 (forty) RED straight 16L rails of the type 3228a as well as a BLACK
> > one.
> > 
> > I immediately checked peeron to find out more about these parts but couldn't
> > find any hints. On bricklink are none of them for sale. Therefore my question:
> > Does anybody have any idea where these red and the black rails may come from?
> > 
> > The parts are obviously molded in this color and not painted.
> > 
> > Thanks for any hints and best regards from Switzerland where it just started to
> > snow.
> > 
> > Beat
> 
> That's a novelty!
> 
> They could be pre-production models.  There have been some unusual parts in red
> before (e.g. the minifig ghost shroud) - test mouldings made by Lego before a
> part goes into mass production.
> 
> Jason R

There's a pretty comprehensive article on the red test moldings at
http://www.lucajuventino.altervista.org/lego/red_track.htm

As the article notes, test moldings are often done in red because it is the most
difficult color to mold.  Hence, Jason's theory makes a lot of sense.  It is
surprising that LEGO would do 40 test moldings of a rail, but that is a
possibility, I guess.

-Jordan



Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Strange rails
 
(...) Red may also be (or at one time was), the most used color. So it may be easiest to load a new mold into a machine running red ABS. I don't think it's surprising they would do 40 test moldings. The mold probably has at least 4 rails. And they (...) (20 years ago, 23-Jan-07, to lugnet.trains)
  Re: Strange rails
 
(...) Hi Beat! LEGO makes test molding for each molding device, so it's clear that many proof parts are molded. The rails you have, are like the one I own (with the only difference that my one is for 9V). The black one is surprising because red is (...) (20 years ago, 23-Jan-07, to lugnet.trains)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Strange rails
 
(...) That's a novelty! They could be pre-production models. There have been some unusual parts in red before (e.g. the minifig ghost shroud) - test mouldings made by Lego before a part goes into mass production. Jason R (20 years ago, 23-Jan-07, to lugnet.trains)

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