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Considering Code 75 Switch how much pain?

1614 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  Ozzie21
For my first layout in too many years skimpy blog

I had decided to keep it simple with Code 100 peco electrofrog (my last layout circa 1974 had electrofrog farish points - they made OO then - , so I couldn't thing of going back to insulfrog), I have read here and elsewhere of the problems people perceive with peco in general and code 100 in particular but thought it would be simple.

I liked the idea of slow acting point motors though and have bought a job lot of tortoises, hoping to rid myself of huge electical loads from the solenoids as well as the much better looking movement.

But I have only just dropped in that code 100 electrofrog and tortoise dont go too brilliantly - I can't use the internal switching without physically cutting the rails it seems - and confirmed from reading various threads on here. I am not keen on cutting up the brand new points - I'll probably mess it up. But the code 75 come with a built in facility to prevent the need for rail cutting.

So *finally* getting to the point if I use a selection of new (in the last year) hornby, bachmann, heljan stock on code 75 will I need to go through all sorts of rewheeling pain and fettling, or will it work fine.

Thanks in advance - sorry if this has been done to death, nothing much came up on searching for code 75
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QUOTE liked the idea of slow acting point motors though and have bought a job lot of tortoises, hoping to rid myself of huge electical loads from the solenoids as well as the much better looking movement.

you'll completely eliminate electrical loads....but vastly increase your requirement for lettuces?


Looking at my very old(?) [relative to many of you]...peco points, there seems to be a lot of difference between check rail clearances, ie wider, that exist with new (code100) points?

A trick I used in the past was to glue in, edge on, slivers of plasticard into the frog gaps to reduce them, preventing the dreaded wheel drop with rigid-chassis locos.

so,have peco (and others?) gradually tightened up their scantlings? (sorry, navy term......forget....senile dementia sets in....erm....)....have they improved their check rail standards over the years?

Because if so, this might be a reason for some points creating probs, (and newer stuff not??)
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which is likely why I have achieved some indifferent results, running-wise, over the years, re-cycling old peco points where I thought it 'didn't matter?'

does anyone know if the peco code 83 points [for the US market] have different dimensions at the crossings?
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