Making accurate train tracks in Maya

I originally thought the tracks would be easy to make by just extruding along a curve. Turns out that just doing that can cause some problems when it comes to accuracy.

Firstly I made a cruve to represent the path of the tracks.

Then I created two cubes that the tracks could be extruded out of.

Just exturding one face out at a time doesnt work because it move the extruded faces to follow exactly along the curve like this


Combining the cubes and the extuding the faces at the same time works if the track is straight


However, as soon as the curve bends you start to get some unwanted twisting in the tracks

I thought a way to possibly solve this would be to have to separate curves so that each rail of the track could be extruded separately. Simply duplicating the curve however only works if the track is straight

At the bend the curves get closer to gether and are no longer parellel

One way i found to get around this problem is to make an object that represents the cart (or something that can follow the curve) I chose a cube. I duplicated it twice and then moved the pivots of the duplicates so that one was horizontally parallel to one rail and the second was parallel to the other. I then attached both to the curve using attach to motion path.

Moving the pivots meant that the duplicates wouldnt just follow the curve along the middle like what you get when extruding one rail on its own. Instead, they follow paths that stay the same disence away from each other at all times. I then created motion trails from the duplicates



Here you can see hoe they stay the same distance apart all the way along



Next, the motion trails can be converted into curves and the rails extruded along them to create an accurate track!

There may be a way more simple way to do this but i didnt find it! maybe im just stupid?