ThaneofFife

Phew......How easy is it to convert to EM?

Could an approach be made to say Tillig I wonder or has anybody already done this? I think they are represented in the UK through International Models in Glasgow. Their RTL code 83 stuff is quite good from the Elite range, not cheap - I think the longest turnout 389mm is about £33 each, but they do the rust coloured rails, single switch blades and metal Vees and check rails. they are nicer looking than the peco turnouts but maybe they could adapt to producing a better sleeper set up. some of their turnouts have the sleepers slightly angled rather than perp to the rails. a better more robust switching mech might be needed as i have heard some people say the contact isnt as positive with no sprung blades. i would have more hope of Tillig wanting to do something than Peco IMO

Yes, OK, I will accept that to be fair.

i know this is playing devils advocate Martin but using the logic that modellers run trains of 4mm/ft scale on 4ft 1.5in track shouldnt we also be looking at shrinking the locos and stock down slightly to match a gauge of 4ft 1.5.in as well if its to be done in the way you suggest (properly uh hum as far 00 is concerned) the alternative being to big up the track to P4 I see what youre saying but I am not yet convinced that the 8ft sleeper is the way this should go. The stock will always be overscale to whatever 00 standards are adopted here so I dont see why the scale of a 4ft 1.5in gauge has to extend to the sleepers simply to stick with the maths - it will still not have the right "look" IMO. Be interested if others feel the same or strongly disagree.

If you have some ink to use up then knock yourself out and write to them. From personal experience the "thank you" reply tends to be the de reguer response from PECO when you ask them questions or put forward suggestions by letter. As I suggested earlier, talking to them is probably going to elicit far more than any letter ever will and if that doesnt work then youve pretty much exhausted the options. Had I been as involved in this thread before Warley I would have spoken to a rep and might have been in a position to say one way or the other if PECO are looking to develop something new and improved however vague they might be about it. I have found it the same with Hornby but alas I havent written a letter as such to them for well over 10 years now.

All you will receive is the standard format letter from the sales and marketing dept - thank you for your letter which has been passed to our product development and research dept. thank you for contacting PECO (and goodnight). they wont enter into any real exchange. better off talking face to face to a rep at one of the shows they attend like Warley. Its a good analogy but not one I would have gone for here. Modellers tend to have one budget for the track on a new layout. Once bought paid for and laid its forgotten (bar any new extensions) but with locos and rolling stock people are forever chopping and changing and upgrading etc. The same cant be said for track IMO. I would welcome new RTL track to UK standards but this comparison I feel doesnt work with track. You would undoubtedly have an upsurge of sales initially as modellers see the product, read about it in the magazines and plan their new layouts but the time to recover tooling costs should not be expected to me made in the blink of an eye after launch. Sales will fall then plateau out so any manufacturer needs to think long term. Also looking at that most recent templot drawing from Martin with the top turnout - is this the desired standard? I cant help but think that still has a hint of "narrow gauge" about it even if the sleepers are 8ft to match the gauge of 4ft 1.5inch - fair enough if I have missed something otherwise I would say that sleeper length has to come down a tad. Personally I think working to a scale goes out of the window when we are trying to improve track that is compromised from the start. I think it should be more about that fine line to settling on a sleeper length that just about fools the eye and doesnt give off that narrow gauge look. Unscientific I know but thats just my ten pence worth.....happy to eat humble pie if anybody can convince me otherwise with a photo of something similar?

I dont think the super long turnouts are out but the medium concrete turnouts in code 75 came out a few years ago now - I would say about 2 to 3 years back at least. A medium radius always seemed an odd choice to me when it suited the large radius IMO. That said how many turnouts of the prototype sit on concrete? you see lots of running line trackwork in concrete then when it gets to a point the sleepers are wooden.......is concrete the red herring to satisfy those that want their unweathered concrete track to look uniform between flexi and pointwork perhaps? anyway I did originally say that this was digressing from OT. Those are not ready to lay are they Bill? The thread title relates to ready to plant/ready to lay. i was about to suggest the scale 60ft track lengths myself so I have to agree. Thing is do you want your 60ft length to be straight as an arrow fixed or slightly flexible like a Tillig point for mild curvatures? you can sail very close to the argument that you might as well buy a yard length and chop it down to give yourself two lengths of 60ft but you get a lot of waste with the bit that are leftover and then you may still have to make the yard length up yourself unless your happy with a length of PECO. For older era layouts say up to about 1990, you get the added play factor of the coach wheels running over the joints to give that familiar noise we still get on some preserved railways today in bogie coaches (clickety clack) but has largely vanished from the modern scene. Its a nice noise and with scale 60ft lengths around any layout running fast passenger services it would sound very cool.

(sorry to go OT for a minute..... but woe!!.....that Class 27 looks terrible now but my dad a couple of them back in the day and you never batted an eyelid. As an adult he might have had reservations of its lack of accuracy (maybe he accepted it for a model of the 70s) but as a kid I certainly didnt spot those awful bogies with the sort of half body half bogie set up going on. It had working lights though Always thought the Lima N gauge Class 86 was ok just sat a bit too high up. These look interesting and code 75 too. If I stick to 00 I may have to look into them but against say a Peco 83 Line US style turnout at about 1/3 of the cost they clearly arent going to compete on price.........I would be tempted more to go with Tillig. I spoke to a PECO rep at the Warley show in 2011 and he told me that they were to bring out a code 75 set of left and right handed super long turnouts (Hornby call them Express points but these were going to be longer) in concrete sleeper. We didnt discuss sleeper spacing and so I assume that if or when these turnouts appears the spacing will be unchanged from other streamline products. I hope Rons logic here also applies equally to high quality updated AC electric locomotives in 00

Also this talk of a new RTL "system" - much of it revolves around pointwork despite the thread title including "track". As there is lots to choose from for 00, EM and P4 flexi track do some not want to be threading rail onto sprues of sleepers and have that as RTL also in the true sense of the thread title? Just wondering.......

im not sure if the dcc version coaches will have a decoder fitted (it would have to be very small as I doubt Bachmann would let it intrude into any of the visible coach interior including the toilets - it could possibly sit in the roof area at a push) or whether they will be continuously powered through the usual insulated wheelsets with pick ups. it would be a shame if there was no facility to turn off the lights but I dont think Bachmann are so narrow minded to omit such an important function (as with the Blue Pullman) because interior lights are only really visible in the dark (or for the pedants - the brief moments in tunnels or under bridges and such like - sorry you have to try and cover all the bases on here to avoid pointless jibes). Maybe like on the Desiro 350s they will have a removeable roof panel with a sliding on-off switch underneath which at least keeps thing nice and simple. I suppose they could have a simple on-off decoder with maybe the possibility that the light brightness can be dimmed or intensified (just as you can with most of the diesel headlights) but I doubt it for my latter idea........I also think that if anything you wouldnt want to turn lights up in these coaches to full brightness. I am sure I read somewhere that the coaches will receive fully detailed interiors too? Seems a good move if you have lights inside. The Rapido Trains Easy Peasy Lighting system is good because you just pass the supplied wand over the coaches and it turns all the lights on or off but maybe not one for the purists

£15 sounds nice. I would have thought that that price point is only going to be a goer if it came from Beer with mass production. TBH I dont see a great deal of the "continual product improvement" the likes we have seen with other manufacturers from PECO - they dont really seem to have moved their products quality or range on much from when I was a lad helping my Dad with his N gauge layouts that had PECO track and lots of its wagons. I think code 75 or the 83 Line ranges may not not have been around but as for actual changes to the track construction I dont think its been changed at all. I can see the arguments for both sides for whether PECO would introduce a new range with better turnouts and improved sleeper sizes and spacing etc. but that aside it would seem to be one of the better solutions that most of us looking for improved RTL track and pointwork can hope for. I am torn a little here because on other threads about the increasing cost of the models themselves we have an army of folk saying that the recent and expected future price increases are not an issue for them and that if you want the best quality you will pay for it then here we have what seems a contradiction of that line of thought - does trackwork not have the same parity as locos and stock? I would say yes it does and posts in this thread support this view. People are saying that for too long now they have had top quality RTR locos and stock and winge and moan about having to run it on poor quality/apperance 00 track. Why do some feel comfortable paying top draw for top models at the same time as cursing those that moan about the price increases yet here the discussion on more than one occasion has suggested that a new RTL point/turnout for around £15 (my kind of price by the way if it can be done) we get comments like the above that hint at a smaller number of modellers who are willing to pay a premium for the better product. Something doesnt add up there......so those that criticise the price increase on the models get panned yet those talking of better track dont want to pay the premiums (at least not on the evidence here so far with maybe a couple of exceptions). I'm not sure Mickey is getting much enjoyment out of this discussion as the majority of his comments seem less about the thread titles aims but more about his wishes for others to use their hands and such like - the thread title wasnt "I have two hands and dont know what to do with them" - if it was then most of Mickeys advice might have been far more appropriate To some degree I would agree with you. Its a very fine line on RMWeb between being helpful and supportive and stuffing opinions down peoples throats which is where some threads end up going downhill. Always tickles me to see that where a route is being sought in a thread there are some folk who want to bring nothing more to the table than negativity to those who wish to do their modelling differently just because it doesnt mirror their set ways. Do those here keen on a new solution think that maybe Bachmann might be interested because they certainly dont sit on their laurels like PECO seem to have done for years? Could they continue to innovate and develop a new range of good 00 trackwork or would their train set trackwork "get in the way"?

its very true about viewing angles. If i stick with 00 for the new layout I might even consider raising its viewing height closer to eye level. doesnt help with the current RTP points though which cannot really be tweaked to improve the look from eye level.

All the too-ing and fro-ing in this thread must be enough to make anybody throw the towel in and bloody well scratch-build their own Look into my eyes.....look into my eyes. We're being hypnotised!

that SMP track a few posts back just about looks OK to me. No comparison to the P4 but the 00 hides its under gauging well i think. they do seem to have got the sleepers sizes bob on to fool the eye and compliment the 16.5mm gauge as best as possible without it looking like narrow gauge which is often the danger when fiddling about trying to make 00 track look better......id like to see a 00 loco on that track at track level to see if the illusion continues.........anyone?

Actually I take that back about the pivoting (I know the threads diverging a bit here, but) I remember seeing the back of an express batting through Bletchley on one of my railway DVDs think it might have been electric traction archive and the rear coach was a BG and as it went over a facing crossover that wasnt in the best of conditions the coach body swayed fairly violently (I suspect a possible effect of a last coach on a train as there is no load on the back end with another coach or coaches) - by that I mean proper side to side motion whilst the bogie just stayed true. I really cant see the benefit in springing bogie pivots on 00 coaches though as the dimensionally gains must surely be minute as to virtually be non-existent. You would gain 1mm tops either side and if that cant be countered with better couplings then I would be very surprised. If you want turnouts with a realistic end throw then the only way to achieve that would be with longer turnouts than the Peco large radius. That means more space required......

Must do Jeff. Ive no concept of the pivot point on real coaches being on a sliding spring arrangement - thats certainly a new one on me and in any event just not practical to model hence why I said "I have my doubts" about same or shorter crossovers not improving the coach throw out. Maybe it also helps more with the slop found in 00 track and wheesl because buffer beam mounted couplers would be pulling the adjacent coach into line with itself using the slack in the wheelsets/rail interface so I would say it must improve the alignment albeit slightly.

The closest I have ever come to getting a near prototypical crossover coach movement (on straight track) from out of the packet points is with the US style 83 line No.8 turnouts (dont ask, it was an experiment) but the coach displacement you mention is just about passable with a MK3 set. Not sure what the Line83 track centres are as standard using two turnouts to form a typical facing or trailing crossover but the no.8 was the minimum I was using at the time and it provided for a very satisfactory prototypical coaching stock movement as it travelled through the formation. end to end that formation measured roughly 650mm. a lot of space taken up. I do wonder if you took 16.5mm 00 track and dropped the track centres to 45mm if you could achieve prototypical coach movements with same as or shorter crossovers (I have my doubts although matters can be improved with current Peco RTR points by trimming down the section of straight between the two points) - at the very least you would need close couplings and maybe even couplings mounted on the coach bodies rather than the bogies to keep the coaches in line better and reduce the throw. I do look at fairly short "swan necked" flowing trailing and facing crossovers on the network today where you see locos and coaches traverse and think how do the coaches remain in line over such a short looking junction when I cant achieve that on my layout at home? I think the shortest crossover for the Mk1 coach to traverse is roughly 2.5 to 3 full coach lengths from a point at the start of the first turnouts toe to a point at the toe end of the last point. that takes up a lot of space in 00. Its one of the more annoying compromises in my book.

fine (no make that superb) for those modelling bullhead. can we see a similar example using wooden and/or concrete sleepers with flat bottom rail? Id like to see if that combo stacks up just as good given the 83 vs 75 code difference. does the higher rail height of code 83 begin to make the track look narrow gauge?

the man knows his 303's!

.........one makes some decisions very carefully as Rapido are chomping at the bit and joining the UK RTR fray...........

......just take a look at "Par" being modelled in 2mm FS on here - another fairly new layout just getting off the ground now. That guys gone for Easitrac too and it so is worth the extra money and effort. Correct about the turnouts but I would go with Cav and have turnouts to N gauge standards with peco for the fiddles as theres no need for finescale back there off scene and helps to keep costs down and construction time low. just need to build up your code 40 on scene slightly higher than the track off scene to get the rail heights to match between your code 40 and your code 55 or 80. Cavs photo in post 59 at a glance makes you think its a different scale of modelling altogether a good trick on the eye.

simon have you thought about using the 2FSs own code 40 easitrac wooden and concrete sleeper flexi for the scenic lines? i couldnt believe the visual improvement from RTR track and I dont think you would have any regrets using it certainly in the longer term. although designed with 2mm finescale in mind the latest RTR rolling stock and locos run fine on code 40 im told.

Classic Traction? and Post Classic Traction? Could they work for people? Im not fussed but its fun seeing all the replies and suggestions.....although referring to the term MI as "devisive" (see post 144) is certainly not an approach i've heard before. thing is as its always a moveable feast in 15-20 years youll need to come up with a category that goes beyond post classic - have fun going in circles again!

i agree with the comments about the 2FS track. im converted - its a whole world away from the Peco products even their N gauge fine range code 55. the concrete sleeper with flat bottom rail looks just as authentic too and spot on for modern image. im planning on purchasing some of this track at the NEC this weekend to start a tiny test bed as I would like to go down this route based on Carstairs station as it was circa 1984/1985. Par has a lovely little track plan with lots of scope for interesting operation and not just trains running straight through.......

I dont recall that goalpost being included in Daves opening gambit post looking back or other restrictions in ideas/comments/suggestions. As I read it, Dave wasnt concerned with the "business savvy" side of things. I'm sure that element would be covered by those more experienced in such things ie; Dave et al