Great chain! very much the kind of thing mentioned, Also a great way for a marble lift to operate the marbles as a power source for the rest of the design! Instead of nails, you might find the small bamboo skewers, interesting though with most of it plastic the reason to stay as much with wood as possible is lost.
Cutting soda bottles with this gadget provides log continuous strips of that plastic that as short or long bits as they are strong and springy and could take pretty much unlimited slight bends without cracking or breaking. I have even considered gluing tinfoil to the end of short bits to create a very temporary low voltage switch that something moving by would cause say an led to blink but not impede what was traveling by.