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Which commercially available turnouts to buy?
Have not been around here for a while due to my job, but I was curious as to
which commercially availble turnouts to buy for a larger club layout?
Micro-Engineering, or Shinohara?
I've heard good things about ME non-weathered flex track, but what about a
reliable turnout that is both DC and DCC-friendly?
Thanks in advance,
-Larry
Thats pretty much what I said (above). But I did hear someone say recently that shops couldn't order Shinohara for an extended period of a couple years, so I was trying to get further comment on that. Inquiring minds want to know.
Rio Grande - The Action Road
A quick web search indicates Shinohara branded Code 70 and Code 100 in stock and for sale at multiple dealers. One of these being modeltrainstuff.com
Byron
LayoutVision Custom Layout Design and Ops Planning
Model RR Blog
I also found Shinohara dealers with my websearch. Price for #8 curved turnouts was about $42. I paid about $29 for my curved #8 turnouts about 12 years ago so seeing how prices have increased, I'm glad I saved them!
As for info, I was more interested in the "back story" than the current availability status.
Rio Grande - The Action Road
Don't forget to consider how DCC-friendly the various turnouts are. A DCC-friendly turnout is a more "short-proof" turnout.
Walthers DCC friendly turnouts obviously are DCC friendly, but they may be out of stock (in my experience) so you have to hunt around or be patient to get the turnouts you need.
Peco turnouts and Atlas turnouts are also more DCC friendly, as are Micro Engineering turnouts.
Shinohara turnouts *are NOT* DCC friendly and will require several modifications to solve their electrical issues, so keep that in mind.
Joe Fugate
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine
Since I already have some 10 or 12 special Shinohara turnouts, so I'll have to suck it up and work with those since they have been in the "bag" for 10 years awaiting the next layout. Any future turnouts, I'll be sure to get DCC friendly. Most of the yard turnouts I will use unless I get a wild hair will be Atlas #6 or ME>
Rio Grande - The Action Road
It's relatively easy to build dual gauge turnouts from a standard gauge fixture. Either the Switch-Works fixture or the Fast Tracks will do, depending on what sort of appearance you want. You just a use a NG track gauge to add the extra rails.to the std ga geometry.
This one has drop in ready made frogs (manganese style) to save having several different frog jig sizes.
The difficult turnouts are the solely NG ones, because thay have a different geometry, and so you need either a separate fast tracks fixture, or a not yet available add-on option for Switch-Works.
Andy
Andy Reichert
I can't believe an experienced modeler would ever melt plastic ties
In recent months, I have seen Shinohara code 70 turnouts on the peg board at Whistle Stop in Portland (not the old Lambert packaging) so apparently they are available.