Pine Creek Railroad posted:Gentlemen,
Texas Pete makes a darn good point here, the old 022 and 711 Tin Plate switches were made super high grade, it is amazing how most of them have lasted thru the generations.
The only negative fall back to them, is their massive power drain when operated. Using the LED's in both the switch and controllers helps, however one must remember they will never be low voltage switches. Mechanically however they are almost bullet proof, if some company would make a new modern low voltage exact copy of these old Lionel switches, that ran via remote control, like the FTCC Switch do, they would be great for our old Tin Plate Trains. K-Line's original low voltage Super Snap Switches were as close to this Engineering as any O Gauge Switch has ever come, minus the remote control of course.
I transitioned in and out of them on my FasTrack layouts for years until Lionel developed the FTCC Switches. Mechanically however IMO the Lionel 022's and 711/072 switches are still top dog, especially for Tin Plate Trains.
PCRR/Dave
There’s no power drain if you do what I did: I have one ZW that does nothing but provide 15 to 16 volts of power to my approx. 15 022 switches.
My Z4000 powers my independently blocked 2 main lines.
And I have another ZW that powers my independently blocked 10 or so sidings, my numerous accessories and my remote control tracks.
Now this is very important. To make this all work, you must do your wiring like mine:
This is also very important. Like me, you need to have in reserve the gigantic 300 watt American Flyer transformer. I will send you a picture of it when I get home tonight, but I’m sure most of you know about it. It’s the one with the Dead Man’s Throttle. It has enough power to wake up the Frankenstein monster!
LMAO,
Arnold
