Gardner, very interesting information. Thank you. Unfortunately, it blows a gigantic hole in my theory of that I found someone who has cheaper track than Atlas. If the $7.99 price is for a 17" piece of track then two fo them would be roughly $16 for 34" while Atlas charges I believe $17 for 40". Pretty much the same price. This gives S scale once again the advantage in track cost.
Jerry wrote:
As to making turnouts on the FT jig, I used a small belt sander to rough in the taper on the rails and finished them off in the FT filing fixture. I made 20 of the turnouts and got to a point where I eyeballed the taper on the frog and closure rails instead of using the jig.
Jerry, awesome idea! When you say "on the rails" exactly which rails do you mean? The point rails?
Thanks guys for ansering my questions and posting the pics. Rusty, those cars look great. I especially like the weathered gondola. I have one of those MPC era cars. I had a feeling it was a S scale boxcar! Your track looks awesome too.
Like a lot of guys I started out with Lionel trains around the tree as a kid but even as a kid I disliked the way the track looked and the way some of the cars looked. I could tell even then that some of them weren't to scale. At least they were not to scale with each other. My favorite car was the scale milk car I had. In the early '80s I got into HO because of the track and the scale equipment but being still young at model railroading I didn't really know what I was doing. Not to long after I got out of the hobby. The bug bit bad in 1996 when by chance I went to a local train show. I decided I was going to get back into Lionel and only collect postwar but those old feelings came back about the cars not looking right so I switched to scale cars and engines. Then the track started bothering me again and it took a year but I decided to go to 2 rail. I thought that this was a logical progression but it really wasn't. Very few others followed this path. I'm not saying that they should have followed me but I thought others would have come to the same opinions about the hobby. My point is I now see a similar thing happening. The fact is there are many advantages to S over O but yet I am the only one asking these questions. That is kind of scary to me.
Another thing that is scary is:
Posted by Johnnyspeed:
I like S, but I can't take the way things are going right now. I'm switching to HO where I can model the PRR steam era. I'm willing to give up some size for product availability, scale fidelity, standards, performance, and affordability. I hope it works out well for you guys, but it just isn't for me.
