I'm building an N-scale layout with my 4-year-old son. I started by laying and soldering Atlas flex track by hand, and had a ton of trouble getting the curves right. The track wants to spring straight, and keeping it in position while lining up joints and soldering was a pain. I kept getting derailments. Kato Unitrack is good, but the cost adds up. Its fixed-radius sections also don't give me the smoothly changing curves I wanted, and raised sections mean adding risers or pier kits too. So I started making printed roadbed that follows a track path defined in software. The sections join together, then ordinary flex track goes into the guide and is held by retaining strips. Everything is press fit. The idea is to settle the geometry before I start laying and soldering the rails. The generator can make curves whose radius changes continously along the track. With grades up / down and with banked curves all in the same curve section. Bridge and tunnel models are in-progress. There's a browser viewer for looking at the parts, assembled sections and it generates print plates for my Bambulab printer. The photos show real prototypes; the full-layout and elevated-section images are CAD. I'm hoping this becomes something we can rebuild into different layouts together as he gets older. Would this be useful to anyone else? Would you want printable files, a configurable generator, or parts generated for your own layout?   submitted by   /u/Gunner3210   to   r/modeltrains [link]   [comments]