The best tools that I have discovered for track work are a pair of 1.5 power reading glasses and a portable clamp on light! They have made all the difference. My pliers are the plain square Xuron track pliers: not the ones with grooves in them. Roger
From: scale S only Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 3:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: {S-Scale List} Spikes Hi Roger -- I don’t know what happened to ME, but their current spikes are nowhere near as good as they were 25 years ago, and that was verified recently when I scrapped out a piece of hand lay track from the old SLE&P. The Walthers spikes are even better than the old ME spikes, though. I had a couple of places (over under-track magnets, trestles) where I thought I could use the ME micro spikes, but I don’t have a tool that can reliably hold them. I shoot more of them off into space than into the ties... They make an interesting bit of scenery if left piled near some track supplies, even if they are just a tad too large for true scale. I am not sure that one could even see truly scale spikes as more than just a bit of fine wire fuzz. And speaking of such things, I salvage the ties from the scrapped track as much as possible. They have very realistic looking marks left over from the rails -- and spike holes, of course -- more scenery items for around the track maintenance area (rails, frogs, spikes, tie plates and ties)... And I actually do reuse some of the old ties now and then. Have fun! Bill Winans --------------------------------- Bill, You’re right: the Walthers “Code 83/100” spikes are very nice. I bought some to play with because when I opened a new bag of Micro Engineering “Small Spikes”, I discovered that they have changed from the ones that I have been using. The heads are large, misshaped and ugly. They are almost unusable. In the more visible places, I still prefer the Micro Engineering “Micro Spikes”. Not great holding power until the ballast glue is applied, but they are close in size to the spikes on the Tomalco flex Track that I use. Roger Nulton
