By consensus of my many emails, most of us still use our own talents for our turnouts.
We either buy Tomalco, Shinohara, Tom's Turnouts, Custom Tracks, Fast Tracks and several other scale turnouts, or scratch build them on our own. Frankly, that is what I've been doing since 1962, using a variety of switches, then eventually rebuilding them. My present layout is pretty old [1974] and I've thoughts of tearing it all up and relaying more modern track, but this is not as simple as it may be in other scales. My trains run fine, like most of us when having an open house, I fine tune the layout, then the trains run okay, but you still have to know what will run good and what won't. The nice thought about a new layout is that you no longer have that concern, the Steamers run as well as the Diesels anywhere on the layout. Most of us when having visitors run the Diesels, although I can run the Steamers on parts of the mainline without trepidation. 8>) I guess my final point of contention is that we really still have no scale standard RTR switches in S Scale. Perhaps American Models will take an exception to my remarks. I'm really only pointing out that should I relay all my track and turnouts perhaps I should lay American Models as I'm sure they sell a lot of track and switches. I have no objection to American Models equipment. SHS was also working on this scale problem, perhaps MTH will finally have a solution this age old S scale switch problem? "S"incerely, Bill (Fraley)
