In all my zeal praising the tortoise switch motor in an earlier posting, I forgot to mention an important modification that I made 23 years ago to improve its performance. (Looking at my 1997 notes reminded me.) Because I was using Ross turnouts with mechanical switch stands I needed more springiness/tension. I accomplished this replacing the provided .025" spring wire with .032" spring wire. To accommodate the increased size of the wire I also needed to enlarge the output arm hole using a #65 drill using a pin vise. In fact, the Tortoise instructions state: "If greater tension on the points is desired for O scale and larger, you may substitute a heavier gauge wire. the output arm will have to be drilled out with a suitable diameter drill bit held in a pin vise." And that's what I did!
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