Craig North Carolina
I have seen that MicroEngineering makes HO scale standard gauge, HO 3foot narrow gauge, and dual gauge (standard and 3foot narrow gauge).
Micro Engineering, Shinohara and Peco have track and turnouts in HOn3. ME and Shinohara have dual gauge HO/HOn3, but only Shinohara offers dual gauge turnouts. There are other suppliers of turnouts that are ready to lay on wood ties, like BK Enterprises.
Rob Spangler
Add Railway Engineering as a supplier of trackwork: http://www.railwayeng.com/
But if I was going to start over, instead of my Shinohara HOn3 and dual-gauge trackwork, I'd go with Fast Tracks jigs and build my own. Since you've handlaid before, that will be a cinch. And much cheaper in the long run for all your common size turnouts.
The Shinohara were the only game in town I was aware of a couple of decades back if you wanted dual-gauge. They work, but the frogs can be a bit lurchy as cars travel through.
I know you talking about this in terms of a interchange for a logging outfit. Lots of times there weren't full dual gauge trunouts, just a NG turnout embedded in dual gauge track or vice versa. You can hack plain ol' HOn3 turnouts into ME or other dual-gauge track pretty easily and that's a lot cheaper than a dual gauge turnout.
These first two pics show variations on that I made.
Then you can also take one of those $40 dual gauge turnouts and hack it into something else to avoid needing to buy a probably more expensive custom piece or having to handlay it yourself.
Be cautious when designing, planning and then buying any dual gauge trackwork. You must keep track of which side the common rail is on, which makes for 2 types of R and 2 type of L -- and if you're wrong when you order, it's a pain.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I bought one G gage switch and nine Hon3 switchs from BK enterprises. Never again. The quality is not there. I had to rebuild the points on the G gage switch and the points came off of the throw bar on the Hon3 switchs. Plus it took almost 10 weeks to get them.
LouI bought one G gage switch and nine Hon3 switchs from BK enterprises. Never again. The quality is not there.
Interesting. I bought some of their HOn3 turnouts back in the 1980s, and the quality at the time was atrocious. No two were the same dimensions, and there were problems with the frogs and/or points on most of them. I had heard since that the product had improved, and the ones I had seen for sale at hobby shops looked much better. Maybe they're still crap.
I have a handful of BK HOn3 turnout kits and they've worked OK for me, although I'd never laid any by hand before.
As for a 10 week delay, BK is like most custom trackwork vendors, they produce to order. A 10 week timeline is actually not bad.