I just opened my last 12 pack box of switches, assembled, wired them, and went to install one. Much to my dismay the wire was not long enough to reach the throw bar on the Atlas switch. I've installed at least 50 of these so far, and have never had an issue.
I have 1/2" plywood, 1/2" homasote, the old style cork roadbed and the customline atlas switches. I built up 5 torti and they are all short by the same distance, about 1/8".
Does anyone know if they have shortend the throw wire to save a penny per thousand?
Someone will know, meanwhile what to do about it? My LHS sells K&S music wire by the piece. Hobby stores that only have a bare minimum train dept. usually have K&S wire and tubing.
The current Tortoise instructions say the 0.025" wire is 3.5" suitable for a total baseboard + roadbed thickness of 1" or less.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Mine have always been too short. I use 3/4" plywood and mount the tortoises to a 1/4" bracket to make adjustments easier. I usually have 1/8" subroadbed and then cork on top of that. It makes quite a thick sandwich.
.
I fabricate my own out of 0.032" music wire.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I have 5/8" plywood, standard cork roadbed and code 83 track and did not (in 2012) have an issue, always trimming the throw wire a bit.
I did add some stiffer wire on a couple of turnouts, either due to imperfect hole in the plywood/roadbed and/or making some throwbars sticky with too much rattle can paint. I recall that Hobby Lobby had some 0.xxx wire that was stiffer, so perhaps they have what you need nearby, without an ordering delay.
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
I have 2 inches of foam to get through, so I make my own rods out of .039 wire from the hardware store. and
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
The supplied Tortoise lever wires are too short for our club layout as well. We are using 3/4" plywood + 1/2" Homasote + Midwest cork roadbed. The wires are short by 1/4" or so.
However, even if the supplied wires were just long enough to reach the throw bars they still would present problems. We are using Velcro to secure the Tortoises to the bottom of the plywood. Invariably the Tortoises will require some adjustment to get them properly centered under the throw bars. The Velcro does not allow for a simple sideways movement of the Tortoise. In order to reposition the switch motor, the Tortoise has to be pulled away from the Velcro. If the throw levers were only cut to the proper length, pulling the Tortoise away from the Velcro would also result in the lever wire being pulled out of the throw bar hole.
Our solution is to use longer lengths of .039" music wire so that the Tortoise can be pulled away from the Velcro without the lever wire coming out of the throw bar hole. Once the Tortoise has been properly positioned and tested we will cut the lever wire off at the throw bar height. We have purchased several 36" lengths of .039" music wire to allow us to do exactly that.
One other thing we intend to do is install the lever wires from the top down instead of trying to feed the wires attached to the Tortoises up from the bottom and through the throw bar holes. (If anyone has an easy way to do that please speak up!!). We will put a piece of straight wire through the throw bar hole from the top and then bend the wire to the proper shape below the layout. We favour bending the wire into a small square with the proper offsets rather than trying to get it into the small hole on the Tortoise lever as the instructions suggest. If we have a long piece of wire above the turnout we will be able to pull the wire down far enough to give easy access for the bending.
The other thing we will do is drill the screw hole in the Tortoise arm out to 7/64". The holes as supplied are too small. It requires a huge amount of force to install the screw. 7/64" still grips the screw plenty tight enough. Has anybody else experienced this?
By the way, I would like to thank Circuitron on behalf of our club for supplying a bunch of screws that were missing from some used Tortoises that we bought. They did not charge us anything including the postage to Canada. Good customer service!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
josephbw,
I just opened a 12 pack a bought a few years ago now and the wires are exactly 3½" long in both packets.
cheers
Alan
Alan Jones in Sunny Queensland (Oz)
Oops clicked twice
Dave,
Some people are just better at lining the wire up with the little hole. I did ok, but on my last layout, one of my work sessions, a friend of mine got ALL the servos in place (servo instead of Tortoise, but same principle, music wire poked up through a hole drilled int he layout and then into the hole in the throwbar - only on that layout it was 4" of foam plus the cork roadbed) in an hour or less, most of them through the first time even. And he's older than I am. I did leave the wire long. I suspect I will have serious trouble with this in the future, since my depth perception is way off because of my vision issues. In familiar situations, my brain seems to compensate reasonably well, but I see it every time I use the net to scoop leaves off my pool, I run the net through the water aiming for a leaf floating along and be sure I got it but, nope, missed it.
Dropping the wire in from the top may be an option, but putting the bends in it to secure it to the servo horn under the layout doesn't seem like it would be fun. Plus if the pliers slip, it usually breaks the plastic horn. Doing that part at the workbench is usually much easier.
Lots of light up top helps - especially if the underside of the layout is not super bright - this is one job you don;t want a drop light underneath with you. Bright light over the throwbar makes the hole stand out when viewed from the underside. ANd like I said, some people are just better at it than others, so in the time it takes someone like me to get 1 switch machine placed, someone who's good at it can probably do 5. The trick in the club is finding who has the skill to do it quickly - pretty much anyone can get the wire through the hole eventually, but if you want to get the job done, you need the fast people on that.
Also, safety tip, if you leave the wire long to allow easier palcement and adjustment, put somethign on the exposed end up top. You'd be amazed at just how invisible even .039 piano wire is, and if you are going to be adjusting the Tortoise position it is quite likely that someone will be leaning over the turnout to view the points. I stuck little flags of blue painter's tape on the ends of mine to draw attention to the pointy wire and avoid poking a hand or eye.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I rooted around in my stash of miscellania and found some suitable wire and completed the task.
I have found that it is easiest for me to place the switch in the trackage, mark it's location in 2 dimensions, then I remove the switch, then drill the hole. Mount the Tortoise in the proper location (centering the wire in the hole), then install the switch. That way you can see the wire and the crosstie hole making it easier to line everything up. A few more steps, but takes way less time than messing around trying to line it up blindly.
The strange part of my ordeal was that I have mounted all my other switches using identical components without any short wire problems. Another one of life's little puzzles I guess.