In the last issue of the Proto:87 Journal, we distributed a survey to try to gauge your interests and to decide how the SIG should proceed.   Of over a hundred surveys, only fourteen came back.
Of these, all but three were NMRA members.  Only two (not the same two) also indicated that they felt we were ready to propose a recommended practice to the NMRA.  The question of Proto:87 or Proto:87.1 was evenly split, although among NMRA members, Proto:87.1 was clearly favoured.
The overwhelming majority were in favour of

formalising the SIG with proper officers.  I will be moving to bring this on in the near future.
Finally, I was delighted to find that four fifths  of the respondents have at least experimented with Proto:87 track and wheels.  Two of those surveyed have started layouts.  The interests of the SIG are pretty varied.  Everything from the Virginia and Truckee through the Pacific Electric of the 20's to transition era Southern Pacific and modern Canadian Pacific was represented. 

I've been building some P87 trackwork with a stock of code 83 rails that is considerably aged. Recently, I got bundles of code 55 and code 70 and some new code 83 rails for my expanding empire. The first number 7 turnout I worked on and it's diverging route went well. I hooked it up and ran some rolling stock through it and was delighted. I did some demonstrations at a couple of clubs and started to have some de-railments. Took a close look and by - golly the turnout had a kink and the diverging route had two kinks!!
After checking around, and seeing a posting on the DCC-SIG about kinked flex track in a yard - it finally hit me. The rail was drawn through a die and had tension in its internal structure. Power applied to the rails had caused the tension to adjust, causing kinking. I set up an experiment with one rail as taken from the bundle the other rail was pre-tensioned by passing electrical flow through it for about 30 minutes. The electrified rail was a little warped when I finished the power - but was easily straighened out for laying. I built up a 3 foot section with PC board ties every 5th tie and carefully spiked on all the wooden ties in between. I then ran an engine back and forth for a couple of hours and then rechecked the gage. The pre-tensioned rail was straight and fine. The untreated rail had several kinks and one broken solder joint at a PC tie.

The idea of the electrical flow causing the kinked rails came from a club that was using new flex track in a yard and noticed it was getting bad after a short time of operation. They orginally thought it was the sub-roadbed and cork they used, but some that was mounted on some soft pine went bad as well. This was reported via the DCC-SIG list to answer some questions about the effects of the bi-polar nature of those signals - which some thought was causing their track to get misaligned.
Any electical power causes kinging and once the rails are normalized all is fine.  I Recommend that you normalize your rails with heat treating or by setting up a flow of electricty before you use them to build the high tolerance trackwork of Proto:87.
I used the unregulated output of my 18 volt 5 amp power supply to drive a #1151 taillight bulb. Thats supposed to be a 20 watt 12 volt bulb. The power supply is used to drive my DCC boosters and the tail light bulbs are used as current limiters for my DCC power blocks. I Ran the light for about 30 minutes on some code 70 and code 83 rail. The test with actual trackwork was with the code 83 rail but the code 70 rail showed some warping as well after the current flow.