O Gauge Switches

[Anonymous]

Past use of Lionel and K-Line switches has been pretty negative.

Anyone that has positive results with switches is what I need, can a specific manufacturer be recommended.

[superwarp1]

I have used Gargraves in the past with not very good results. Go with Ross custom switches or Curtis Highrail switches. Hand made in CT with very smooth operation. You will not even hear your trains running over them.

Regards,

Gary

[clinchfieldfan]

I agree with superwarp1 you can't go wrong with the Ross custom switches. I built my layout with atlas o track and switches because I liked the prototypical look. I used the early atlas o track and the electrical conductivity was not the best. After extensive wiring the track is fine but I really had to go the extra "mile" of wire. I am in the process of building a third mainline out of Gargraves track with Ross switches. This track is much simpler to wire, much better electrical contact. The Ross switches are the best.

[Roger Bielen]

I used mostly Ross switches with Gargraves track. I have a coupe of Gargraves on a spur line that I used trying to save a few $'s, there is no comparison. Go with the Ross.

[Anonymous]

I use Lionel switches. What's wrong with them other than their look? They never have failed me, and I like the "CLANK!" noise they make that lets me know when it's been thrown. Sorry to go against the "grain" here so to speak, but I like em! NOW, LIONEL!! Make em in all the various configurations like the ones listed elsewhere in this thread---pretty please.

[Anonymous]

Amtrak Jack:

I have four new 022 Lionel switches, 2 left & 2 right. They've been giving me nothing but heartache since I first screwed them down on to my layout.

I believe the quality of construction of these switches at the Chinese factory is not what it was at the old US factories. So what else is new?

I've gotten things to the point where the points don't get picked quite so often (I still have to try a couple of things that lionelsoni suggested); but now, my son's General (aka General Hot Shot), which I have now reversed so it's going arouind the loop in the opposite direction, will get its E unit tripped to neutral when it goes over a switch that previously wasn't giving me any trouble. And this is on the straight through route.

I'd like to see someone, like Lionel, make reliable, well made # turnouts & wye switches & yard switches, etc. I don't care so much about the look of the track.

That said, I'm currently planning to build my next layout using Gargraves track & Ross switches because of the variety of configurations & the reliability I'm reading about on this forum & the OGR forum.

Tony

[lionelsoni]

Tony,

The "General" pickups don't have much of a footprint and tend to do poorly on any kind of switches. I took the pickup off the baggage car and moved it to the tender, with a 1-wire tether to the locomotive. (I generally remove the lamps from baggage cars anyway as not being very realistic.)

[Anonymous]

Bob:

I'd do that, but the baggage car in that set has an air whistle in it. There's no whistle in the General.

Is that thing even worth upgrading to TMCC via one of TA Studios boards? If it were upgraded, that would put Railsounds in the tender & we wouldn't have to worry about the air whistle....

Tony

[rlplionel]

Unfortunately, I would have to agree with the comments here on the newer Lionel switches. However, I don't think the Chinese are to blame for the problem - they only do as they are told. The problem with the newer switches is that the design was changed from the original Lionel postwar O22 switches, which were very reliable. I had two of the newer Lionel switches on a reversing loop and was getting derailments almost every time through. It got so bad that I didn't even want to use the reversing loop! Then I replaced these switches with the postwar O22's. Guess what - no more derailments. Even backing a long freight train through the curved portion of the switch is no problem. So if you want to stay with Lionel switches, my advice would be to use the original postwar O22's.

Robert

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the inputs, rossswitches.com does not list compatibility with "What make track"...here we go again, lack of catalog detail. Will take my time in selecting track and switches.
Track tried so far: K-line tubular is pretty fair. Atlas - O looks super, both have provided good conductivity with my ovals on a 4 x 8 layout, using only one terminal connection for each.

[Roger Bielen]

I used Gargraves flex track since I wanted the variablity that flex offers in curvature and length. It is compatible with Ross and Curtis switches. Ross, I don't know about Curtis, also makes their own line of track. Gargraves can be adapted to mate with other brands.

[Anonymous]

As a kid we had postwar 022 switches. Hours upon hours of dependable use. I purchased new 072 Lionels for my adult layout. Have not built the layout yet but runing around the Xmas tree and on floor the switches as they came from the factory are terrible. The center rails are higher than the outside rails. I fixed this by dismantling the switch and grinding on the bottom of the rail to lower the senter rail height. The other problem seems to be in the casting of the 'thing that moves back and fourth' that the train actually runs on. When the switch 'flips' it does not make good contact to the outside rails which allows the wheels to go on the wrong side of the 'center piece'. I have fixed this somewhat by bending the rail. I have also thought about buying older 072 switches. my brother has built with gargraves and does not like the dependability / campadability of the switches. He wishes he had used 072.

[Anonymous]

I would like to point something out:

There have been many posts claiming that the newer switches suffer from a change in design, or that the Chinese have bad tooling, etc. When I spoke to the technician at Lionel about known problems with the newer switches, his comment was "We don't get a lot of these back here, so it's not fair to say that there's any problems with them."

If the newer 022 & O72 switches are not working properly out of the box, people should not fix the things themselves, but send them back to Lionel.

The only way Lionel is going to get the quality on these things improved is to find out exactly how many of these things really are bad. Granted, we have a sample bias problem on a forum like this one, since only the people with bad switches are going to speak up. But it does seem that the buzz on the newer switches is that a lot of them are bad from the factory.

Again, I can't emphasize this enough, send the defective things back to Lionel without modifying them yourself.

Tony