----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sorry for the long wait for a reply to Gary's question about the railroad tick marks, but I was out on my first actual vacation since 1988. It was terrific (in case you wondered). Gary asked how I managed to get the ticks to be evenly spaced. When I make the jillion copies, there's a tick in the middle of each one (or two ticks or three, however many I want) so that just joining the jillion copies together works fine to get the ticks evenly spaced. An alternative way to do this is to make the double line as I suggested, then use the transform popup under the effect pulldown. From there, you use move and apply to duplicate. HTH. vh