Hi everyone, I was just wondering what people's experiences were with these. I've always used medium and large radius peco and Kato, but was thinking of using these for staging, I'm interested in reliability, I don't intend to power them
Cheers
Graham
Assuming you mean the SetTrack 9" radius ones.....
Dead frog so short wheelbase locos may stall.
Generally fine for bogie type diesels, DMUs
Some big steamers may not get round because of the radius
Close coupling may be compromised becuase of the tight radius (for buffer-fitted stock)
Some of mine have eventually come apart when repeatedly whacked across by a solenoid type point motor, but for hand operation should be fine
At the moment, for some bizarre reason it seems hard to find RH ones! LH ones are plentiful.
Cheers Jon :)
In case you mean the streamline 12" radius, my experience is that they are fine with all rolling stock. You will most likely need to clean the stock rails and switchblades periodically to maintain reliability if you are not powering the frog.....
I've used the setrack 9" points in my coaching yard and they're ok but they do look improbably tight. That area is partially hidden from view and I needed to save space. My little 4 wheel diesel passes over the dead frog most of the time... I've standardised on the small (12") radius code 55 live frog points for the main part of the layout and I think they look really good and operate smoothly. All my locos pass smoothly through them. I was worried that they would look too tight a radius but imho they're fine...
Agree with Scottystitch and Bruce - I have the code 55 small electros everywhere in my fiddle yards and I've found nothing yet which won't traverse them. They also look far better than set track points.
I also agree with some of the points raised by PostMod66, having experienced a couple of them; I have a couple of 14xx that derail when going through and I think its my Hall that gets buffer lock and can't get through either. If I knew the problems I would get I probably would have tried something else (but it's only a small layout and the small radius points were the right dimensions, so I live with it).
Stu