Fox Valley Models S #5turnouts Now Available

Photos posted by Ron on the Facebook group if you want to see them. I'm putting my order in soon.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sscale

All sold out!  Additional turnouts are due to arrive in October.

Bill $ posted:

All sold out!  Additional turnouts are due to arrive in October.

Crap... I guess that's good news though. We are starved for product.

So 12 days since these were sold out and nobody has a review?  I did see a blurb on the S-scale list that they look nice…

Tom Stoltz

in Maine

Apparently Ron still has Hi-Rail #5's in stock at DPH.

Yeah, I saw that he did get some more, but I guess no one is willing to give a report...

Tom Stoltz

in Maine

There were quite a few of them on display at Indy 0 & S show Saturday.  Real nice,  Nice proportions.  Frog can handle most anything.  I believe the price was around $34.  One third the price of Atlas O 2 rail and much better appearing.  Copper straps embedded. All rails electrically connected,  frog tab for powering off to side.  Properly insulated frog, rails can not jam into frog.  Secondary frog milling for increased compatibility.   Just a real nice piece.  Goes perfectly with their flex track.  Great time to be in S.

An email I received from one of the guys on the YaHoo S Scale board indicates folks might try contacting Fox Valley Models directly for the availability of the turnouts.

According to what I read over there, FVM had a bunch Fed-X'd in for the O/S show.

Rusty

An email I received from one of the guys on the YaHoo S Scale board indicates folks might try contacting Fox Valley Models directly for the availability of the turnouts...

Rusty, it’s not so much availability of the turnouts, but rather no one is commenting from a user’s point of view. They appear to have a mixing of the metals in the rail department, similar to AMs turnouts. I would like to know what will run through the Hi-rail model. I’m guessing that the scale turnouts will not allow for Hi-rail operation though I’m not sure why not. A scale/Hi-rail turnout is easy to make, the problem is getting Flyer to cooperate, too. Conversely, a Hi-rail/Flyer turnout is also easy to make, but then scale won’t play.

I’m only talking about open frog turnouts, I am aware there are other ways to get all 3 to play nicely together.

Tom Stoltz – in Maine

Tom Stoltz posted:

 

 I’m guessing that the scale turnouts will not allow for Hi-rail operation though I’m not sure why not.

 

Tom Stoltz – in Maine

Well, here's a crop from a picture I took at last year's S-Fest.  The scale version is the upper, hirail the lower:

As can be seen, the frog and guardrails have more generous clearances on the hiral version.  Fox Valley had a pair of SHS trucks there, one scale, one hirail.  The SHS hirail truck won't make it through the scale frog, but bounce and usually derail. 

How well the Fox Valley hirail turnout will play with Flyer wheels is anybody's guess because there's a certain lack of consistency for gauge and flange depth on Flyer wheels...  I have some Lionel/MPC cars that the flanges bump on the molded spikes on AM's track. 

AM and SHS/MTH wheels should have no problem.

I'm not in the market for track right now, so I haven't picked up any of these to play with.

Rusty

Based on personal experience any open frog turnout that will work with scale and high rail wheels is unforgiving of incorrectly gauged high rail wheels. There might be a customer satisfaction issue if a commercial product were offered with a combination design.

Here is a picture of some of my turnouts during fabrication. the spacing looks wide in the picture but the guard and wing rail gaps barely pass a Gilbert or Lionel high rail wheel. Slightly off gauge they will jump up and usually derail.

Tom,

Those turnouts look great.  Nice work! 

Do you have any more pictures and info on how you build them?

Thanks, Mike A.

I did not build these myself, I had them custom built for me using modified FasTrack jigs. I have neither time, patience nor skills to build 46 of these at this quality level. I unfortunately do not have pictures of the actual assembly. Below is a picture during layout construction that was emailed to me. It is low resolution but the four cuts for isolating the frog are visible as well as the frog insert to pick up the wheel flanges. The spike heads are not quite visible. The uncoupler and custom made sensor track are also in the picture. After weathering and ballasting they exactly match the rest of the track.

Two more construction pictures. First shows the relative sizes of the #5, 6 & 8 turnouts. All turnouts are one of these three sizes. The second picture is the crossing where main line 1 crosses the turntable approach track.

Tom, your turnouts are really beautiful.  I really like layout shots, do you have more you could post?

Tom Stoltz in Maine

The Fox Valley turnouts look good and I sure hope they do well in the S gauge market. Two years ago when I needed turnouts there was no source that could supply the quantity in the time we needed them.

Tom Stoltz, here are two of your turnouts, not my layout. These are really nice. Below that is a closeup of the frog area of one of the #5 turnouts on my layout.

I do not want to get off the subject of the turnouts here, so I will do a separate thread on layout pictures  

Tom,

Thanks for posting the pictures!  You may have already mentioned it somewhere, but what code is all your rail (148, 138 or other)?

Mike A.

The rail is .138. It is MTH flextrack, the rail used for the turnouts was just pulled out of the flextrack. 

jonnyspeed posted:

Bill $ posted:

All sold out!  Additional turnouts are due to arrive in October.

Crap... I guess that's good news though. We are starved for product.

A month has gone by since DPH sold out of their first shipment on turnouts and still no users report on any of the S lists I am on.

Tom Stoltz in Maine