Richard Gonzales posted:The only other issue you need to know about is running Lionel Post war engines and operating cars with slider shoe pickups through Ross Switches. The design of the Ross Switch will cause the engine / car to uncouple when the slider shoe crosses the center rail of the switch. Operating cars with slider shoes will activate when going through a Ross Switch. Jim Barrett has a fix for this problem in one of his back shop videos. It involves filing back the slider shoes, and insulting the car body from the track ground. I decided not to alter my post war operating cars, so I leave them on a siding and operate them in place, and never run them on the layout.
A less invasive fix for the postwar slide-shoes is to shim them up. A thin, U-shaped shim is slipped above the metal plate on the underside of the truck--between it and the "stop" on the upper part of the shoe (the part that the strap spring presses down on). It takes some doing to get the shim in there, but it requires no glue, and will never come out unless you want it too. There is a price to be paid, though: all the uncoupling / unloading rails have to be shimmed up, too, or the shoes will not touch them and the cars will not operate; it is also important that the elevated control rails are isolated when the track is not in operation, since the third-rail pickups may possibly touch them. Making custom track is preferable to modifying the cars, from my point of view.
Concerning switch machines, the Z-1000s are generally reliable...emphasis on "generally." Every once in a while, one will not complete its motion, even though the led shows the switch has thrown. I can't speak for Tortoise. I use a lot of the old twin-coil machines, such as were once sold by NJ, Kemtron, and PFM. For one thing, the price is right (more left to spend on the switches!) I find that I like the loud audible feedback, and that they are very reliable once you get the contacts adjusted. Of course, I'm the sick person who finds wiring kind of relaxing, so that's another "feature" of these, from my point of view. Obviously, they are non-starters if you need TMCC compatibility.
