On the for sale or trade forum there is a listing for a 3-Rail Stud-Rail layout. It is a very realistic looking track system. Can someone familiar with it explain how it works, who manufactured it and when? I assume there is a stud sticking up between the ties and the locomotives had long slide shoe pickups but I am not sure and cannot tell from the pictures. I would like to learn more about it.
Thanks much, Jim Lawson
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I just saw the set on the sale forum. Not sure if you can safely run 3 rail engines with roller style pick-ups on it or if you need to use the slide shoe type of pick-up for the center rail.
Lee Fritz
Jim if you look at the last photo you can just make out the studs. I had to blow it up a little to view them.
You really need a non-roller type center pickup, as on the old Marx and all - the big flat plate. The ties have tiny studs that are the center "rail" and the big long slide goes from one to the other.
Try to run a roller center pickup on it and it doesn't work smoothly (sometimes the loco just sites there not making contact) and if you get it going, it sounds a bit like a bicycle with a playing card clothes-pinnned to the wheel. And its probably not good for the rollers of the studs, either.
I think Len2 on this forum has experience with studded center rail track.
You really need a non-roller type center pickup, as on the old Marx and all - the big flat plate. The ties have tiny studs that are the center "rail" and the big long slide goes from one to the other.
Try to run a roller center pickup on it and it doesn't work smoothly
Correct. And on that topic, the other O-gauger magazine had an article years ago about an inventor who had created "skis" having a C-shaped clip on top that would attach to the rollers. Then the loco would ski over the studs.
I saw the pictures. The studs were almost invisible. The track looked quite realistic.
There were several really inventive folks who worked on O Scale stud rail and shared here. I believe all discovered that going 2-rail was less expensive, more reliable, and lots easier.
. . . going 2-rail was less expensive, more reliable, and lots easier.
Definitely. It's not that it won't work, its just that it is a lot of hassle and requires the use of non-standard "stuff" making it rather hard going compared to three- or two-rail modeling.
And if that third-rail bothers you from the standpoint of realism, probably having little dots in the middle of each tie will probably bother your sense of prototypical aesthetics, too.
I just can't imagine having to wire all of those little studs!
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