I'd be curious about this, myself. How long does it take to pay off the jigs, if bought? I know you are trading time for money. I'm sure one advantage is being able to fit where desired. Another is that you never run out of switches and need to wait....
The entire jig kit with enough rail for 6 switches was just at 300. But I bought a couple of tools that I won't be using, such as the coping saw. Itcame as part of the package. The critical tools seem to be the point/frog filing tool and the jig. Sooo, I could have saved a few bux if I had known that. Anyway. I will end up needing 45 plus switches. Which at 20 bux each, is over 900 bux. I will have to buy more rail, but some can be recycled from the track I remove for each switch. So the savings will come out to be probably about half price. As for operability, these will be way more readily operable. Even the first two I have installed work better than all the switches I had before, Peco, Shinohara, Atlas and others. And that is without juicing the frogs yet! And only steam locos! It is really easy with the jigs, so give it a try.
So we had an Official Gold Spike ceremony today, and the CEO even crawled out of his shack to attend! He's the fella in the middle with the broken brown tophat and matching coat. A few folk attended from the local area, which is sparsely populated as yet, tho a father with two kids showed up for the historic event. And, not to be deterred by such frivolity, two more switches were installed and tested. Am going to have to work harder at putting curveature in the point and diverging stock rails. This is beginning to become a fun process!
I hope you remembered to pull the spike back out, and lock it in the company vault. If not, some railfan will surely steal it!
The NPBH is a cheap outfit and used a gold painted spike! And most of that peeled off during the driving, so come n get it.
Spent some time today at gcav17's layout and installed an Econami in my Hiawatha 4-4-2. Have been wanting to do this for a while and finally made time to do it. It went pretty well as the loco is DCC ready. The speaker fit over the holes cast in the tender floor. I used a TCS 1/2 inch round speaker, which I have been very happy with. So here's some pics and a short vid. Yes, pulling freight, but it is just testing! The headlight quit me so disassembly is warranted.....
I wonder if in their late days, if they ever did pull a freight... Never heard it mentioned, but crazy things have happened.
Is the headlight LED ? I don't see a resister in the wireing , unless it's in the loco or stock wireing .
It did work during my first test runs before I put on the shell. So I am guessing I "fixed" it so it wouldn't light up anymore.
She will get a bit more tearing into when I get back to MT and my shop. I will keep y'all up to date. Thanks for the input!
And here's the mighty Hi doing what she is meant to do. And a poor pic of the newest loco to head for the NPBH via the CM&B.
Well the NPBH got their newest loco home in one piece from the CM&B! And here we have her hauling her first revenue freight over the road, boxcars full of oils in drums! The shipment of new tank cars form Intermountain is still pending..............
Well the NPBH got their newest loco home in one piece from the CM&B! And here we have her hauling her first revenue freight over the road, boxcars full of oils in drums! The shipment of new tank cars form Intermountain is still pending..............
So, hear I go installing a switch on the layout and finding a short! Even though I tested it before hand. So that came down to a teeny bit of copper from the PC tie being in between the rails near the frog. Just to the right in this pic. And so, with that fixed I test the track and have 11-13 ohms still. Desoldering switches everywhere yielded no correction. Then the flash to the brainpan arrived! And I unplugged the DCC power supply. DUH!!!!!!! So, I used my brain-fart to start applying ties. Now I just have to figure out switch motion and frog juicing on a budget. Has anyone used the throws by the Humpyard?
So I have all the switches I desoldered while hunting for the "short" resoldered and have actually run a train!!! Has been since July already, the heavy work load this summer has been busy! Used the ten-wheeler to push a caboose with a dust monkey around after spending time polishing track clean. It turns out that the summer was hard on the track on one curve . The inside rail must have not had a big enough expansion gap as it popped the spike heads off on the ME 55 flex. Am in the midst of fixing that as I type, just waiting for caulk to dry......... Yes, the A/C has been on most of the time. Only a couple of times has it gone out while I have been away working....which must account for the popped rail.
Expansion was an issue at the end of every summer for the first four or so years on my garage layout. Even though I had gaps here and there the layout was larger than any I had done before. It was usually one or two spots on the main, but I did not expect the Peco code 80 turnouts to actually end up squeezed out of gage. Be ready for more adjustments. Good to see you're back in action.
