Thanks! Great to hear from you Tom. In my opinion it is unfortunate that FV chose to use cast frogs. The .138 rail FV uses seems to have better metallurgy than the MTH and Lionel rail. Were I building the layout today I would use the FV flex with handlaid turnouts but when my layout was built FV had not yet introduced their track products, the only immediate source of .138 flex track in quantity (750') was MTH.
The crossing is an interesting part of the layout. It allows engines to move from the TT/roundhouse area to the back of the freight yard without using the main line. All the cut gaps are visible in the picture. Because it is a shallow angle, all metal crossing the diamonds must be powered through a PSX-AR-AC auto reversing board.
Tom, if you had not done all the hard work on scale and high rail wheels and posted the videos I would not have considered making these turnouts. I have spent many hours regauging wheels on Gilbert and AF by Lionel rolling stock to get them perfect. The turnouts are not tolerant of mis gauged wheels. All AM, SHS and MTH are perfect right out of the box. The engines Lionel makes are perfect but most of their rolling stock was made .1" narrow. I finally found the right size of snap ring pliers that has speeded up spreading the wheels on the axles.
