E-Z Street is not dead.

it's not dead,

but  AutoMotionFX is easier, more flexible and doesn't need fixed powered track shapes.

@AlanRail posted:

it's not dead,

but  AutoMotionFX is easier, more flexible and doesn't need fixed powered track shapes.

@Lee Willis took an extensive foray into the AutoMotionFX camp and finally abandoned it as being far too maintenance intensive to keep running reliably.

I knew Lee ventured into the AutoMotionFX from some of his posts here and thought he had abandoned EZstreets.  I had no idea he gave up on AutoMotion FX.  I wish he posted here regularly like he used to I really miss his talents that he shared.

Automotionfx  uses Glowforge draft board and likely the Glowforge to laser cut the roadway and engrave the underside groove for the ferrous rods. It appears that way from the roadway pieces I have.

I've laser cut the roadway and upper city parts. Next  will be engraving the groove.

Not sure what maintenance issues Lee had. This roadway system in HO is used extensively in GB according to YouTube videos.

I guess I'll see.

@AlanRail posted:

Not sure what maintenance issues Lee had. This roadway system in HO is used extensively in GB according to YouTube videos.

I'd send Lee an email and ask him the details, I'd rather not speak for him.  It's not the roadway, it's keeping the cars running long term that I believe was the issue.

It is a little pricey......... It is cool'... I can see the maintenance involved mainly the cars.  According to the web site.. the cars could be a problem...

And according to Lee, they're a royal PITA.

I guess it's my PITA!

Here are the paths I will be engraving to the underside of my roadways. I made a mirror copy to guide the grinding of the wire pathways.

I have 4 Right Turnouts and one Left; the rest are pass-thru-s.

That's quite a route Alan, I hope it works out for you, it should look great!

EZ-Streets, formerly K-Line's Super Streets have brought a new dimension in operating train layouts, and am surprised it didn't gain wider use. I especially like the intersections. Picture below shows one track - that I use for a trolley - intersecting a two-lane city street. I isolated the trolley track from the two lane (with common ground) and control both using VAR channels on a dedicated DCS handheld. With the DCS controller I can get the cars to move around 5-6 volts, which provides nice slow and realistic movement of the vehicles. When Lionel took over, K-Line by Lionel, they made a couple of TMCC vehicles, but then a few years later stopped production. The RR crossings they made were a great idea, though are tricky to plan for and implement. I recall only one other Streets operator was able to incorporate the crossings. If anyone else has, I'd love to see your work.

I like EZ Street but don't have any. Why?

It appears that it would be hard to retrofit into an existing layout without a whole lot of destruction.

If I were starting a new layout, I would design and build it around a logical arrangement of EZ Street streets

I think the lack of wider acceptance is multifaceted... the difficulty of retrofit being one factor. I think probably for some the road vehicles on their layouts are more part of the scenery which, whilst you want to look good, you don’t want to distract from your trains which are the “actors” of the layout. And there are of course other options for moving cars though I do tend to think EZ Streets is the simplest of the lot. I do wonder also if people were more aware of the predecessor SuperStreets and were just unaware that Bachman picked up production after K Line was fully subsumed by Lionel?

I do think that EZ Streets is kind of ideal for adding a trolley line to layouts or building a traction layout and I do wonder if more people have tried that. I know Lee was also toying with the idea of using it for street running which I think would be a spectacular addition to layouts large and small.

@Redshirt214 posted:

I know Lee was also toying with the idea of using it for street running which I think would be a spectacular addition to layouts large and small.

Lee was heavily into Streets at one point, then he got the Automotionfx bug and was really going strong on that.  After he decided that the Automotionfx car design was too maintenance intensive for reliable running, he is working on a modified slot car track and custom cars for his roads.  I am sad that Lee doesn't post much here anymore, he does some really interesting stuff, and he jumps in with both feet!

I think this whole area is going to have a very interesting future. All the current "car animation" systems rely on various low-tech "tricks" in order to be affordable. They are amazing, but pretty limited. I think that this is about to change. Robotics and the emerging autonomous driving world are advancing computer vision and route planning software at an incredible rate, and it doesn't take a supercomputer to run the resulting algorithms. An O-gauge car with a forward-facing camera capable of driving itself on the roads of a layout is probably possible now, and will soon be trivial. (Think of those "line-following" robot toys that have been around for years).  It won't be long before somebody from our tribe retires from Tesla or Uber and uses his or her skills to launch a  little company that does self-driving model cars for real.

We shall see..,

Am pretty sure I shared this video before, and is worth sharing again for those who've never seen "Streets" in action. Not seen is the trolley coming through the cross tracks . It's kind of obvious that the vehicles need headlights and figures...the latter of which I've been able to add fairly easily. Am not sure if I have the skills to add head and tail lights, however.

@Redshirt214 posted:

I think the lack of wider acceptance is multifaceted... the difficulty of retrofit being one factor. I think probably for some the road vehicles on their layouts are more part of the scenery which, whilst you want to look good, you don’t want to distract from your trains which are the “actors” of the layout. And there are of course other options for moving cars though I do tend to think EZ Streets is the simplest of the lot. I do wonder also if people were more aware of the predecessor SuperStreets and were just unaware that Bachman picked up production after K Line was fully subsumed by Lionel?

I do think that EZ Streets is kind of ideal for adding a trolley line to layouts or building a traction layout and I do wonder if more people have tried that. I know Lee was also toying with the idea of using it for street running which I think would be a spectacular addition to layouts large and small.

I did use ez streets for my trolley line, very happy with it. still have many pieces left over.

I don't use this product because it doesn't fit in with my rural setting.  Were my layout urban, I would have strongly considered it.  The primary attraction is that the trains can run on the streets, too:  urban street tracks were once very common.  The biggest problem for me would have been vehicles in the correct period--interwar.

Interestingly, I see to recall several instances where street running occurred in what I would consider “country town” or “rural” settings... largely in the Southern US and I think the relic of early railroad development.

palallin, sir, might I inquire what Battery you are with? I’m with the 1st Ohio, Battery A, aka “The Statehouse Battery” myself. I’ll be off to another re-enactment next weekend. I need to update my profile picture to show myself in uniform...

The biggest disappointment for me has been that the "focus" of the track has been for automotive vehicles, and not for traction type vehicles. You cant use the "wye" to create passing sidings or passenger islands. and there is no way to do crossovers for parallel tracks. The full length straight needed to mate with traditional/fastrack makes going from street running to private ROY annoying. I often thought, however, that it would make a decent base for an o-scale "t-trak" module standard, as it has concentric curves.

I gaze a bit enviously at Tomix/Tomy-tech offerings in N.

At one point in time, the "other guys" did have an expansion to one of their project layouts that utilized Superstreets/EZStreets for some RR street running, but iirc, it was only a straight line through town.   It's been so long since I looked at it