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Turnouts/Switches - Rock City Railroad

At first I built my entire layout with Atlas switches. What a mistake! Even the large radius turnouts, which are the only ones that come close to working, derailed my trains for no apparant reason.

I finally gave up and tore up all the Atlas turnouts and replaced them with Peco turnouts which at least don't derail the trains. They have good points and bad points.

First, the good points:

They are reliable. Trains don't derail as long as you use ONLY large radius turnouts. All others will derail long engines!

They come with their own motors and their own accessories attatchment to control lights.

They are available at almost all hobby stores


Here's the bad points:

They cost a lot

They switch hard, especially when new and not broken in right. The springs are very strong is why, and sometimes normal AC accessories power from your powerpack is not strong enough to click them over and they just buzz, or you have to push the momentary switch hard to get good enough contact to turn them. Fortunately there is a cure for this problem. Get a "Snapper" from Circuitron ($29.95) which boosts the power to the switches and makes them work much much much better. Peco should recommend them.

You have to cut a big whole in the bottom of your layout for the switches to mount to the bottom of your turnout. This can be avoided by getting a Peco made extension arm that goes through the bottom of your layout, but I chose to cut the big hole for a stronger connection. This was before I discovered the "Clicker" though, which gives them so much power the extension arm might be ok. Mounting it would be quite a precision job though, and if you had to move the turnout slightly the mounting would all be off.

The motor mounts to the turnout by bending tabs over, a primitive way if you ask me, and it's very difficult to remove the motor without removing the entire turnout and surrounding track.

The Peco accessory switch, which attaches to the bottom of the Peco motor, is crude, falls apart easily, and the tabs for soldering the wires breakes off easily, especially since they're made sticking out sideways but must be bent downward to actually wire up. They're fragile tabs and this is already one bend too many.

The accessory switch must be glued to the bottom of the motor, and there are no guides to hold it in the right position, and if it's not glued exact, the turnout won't work properly. Also, they don't say what kind of glue to use, what to do if the glue hardens and it's not positoned properly, etc.

Also the bottom of the accessory switch always gets pulled out under the layout when you're trying to wire it (nothing holds it in place except slight friction) and you can't put the switch back together without pulling out your entire turnout .(a big job)

It's amazing a company as big as Peco can't fix such stupid problem, but I guess it goes with the business. Look at Atlas. They can't even make a turnout that works.

Click for the schematic below for wiring your turnouts enlargement.



Coming Soon:

a similiar schematic for wiring the blocks and their corresponding control panel lights.


Rock City Railroad | Photos | Links| What's New| The Hobby| The History| The Design| Build your own Layout| Do's & Don'ts For Builders| The Benchwork| Laying the Track| Wiring| Control Panel| Background| Switches| Tools| Engines| Cars| Buildings| Couplers| Wheels/Trucks| Trees| Autos & Trucks | Roads & Sidewalks| Towns| Painting & Weathering | Landscaping Mountains| Lighting
Pages - Nancy & Ruben - Rock City Railroad - Primerica Financial Services - Thanasombat - Rambo & Zimba -
L.A. Clubs - L.A. Bands - Great Links - RCN Archives - Art -Photos - L.A. Tour - 1 - 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 7- 8- 9- Editorial - Advertising - L.A.Directory - Maps - Tours - Concerts - Tix - Pages - Cities - E Mail - Home -