Are S Gauge R27 FasTracks fixed???

I go to every TCA show at York and as of the October show have not found a vendor that has the revised Fastrack 27 wide radius curve.

John.

It’s like a reverse chicken/egg scenario...

Lionel won’t do another run and fix the issue till the defective ones are sold out, and people will not buy them until they are fixed by Lionel.  

Stupid

Ben 

Is there enough material on the spikes to grind a bit off and still leave enough to hold the rail in place?

Most likely I would say yes, and I have thought about making a jig or something to do it.  the  fact that all the other (non R54) FastTrack pieces hold the rail down without making contact with the flange would make me think there is enough material there to make it work.   

It is a lot of time consuming work, and if you grind off to much that could be an issue, and you would have to touch up every spot you grind down with paint to make it blend in. 

Ben

I used a Dremel tool to grind down the spikes on the AF Fastrack R27 curves.  I put a piece of the track in a hobby vise and used a cutoff disk to grind down the spikes.  I used the flat part of the cutoff disk to grind down the spikes rather than trying to cut off the spikes.  I tried doing one spike at a time but what worked better was to use the groove on the inside of the rail as a guide and moved the Dremel tool along the rail.  It did not loosen the rails but if you hold the track on its edge you can see where the cutoff disk scratched the inside of the rail.  I think it’s an acceptable fix to the problem.

John.

I ordered a circle of R27 track from Marios last year.  Four were bad.

Brendan

Brendan posted:

I ordered a circle of R27 track from Marios last year.  Four were bad.

Brendan

Four were bad as in having the spikes too high, or were they bad another way?

Does MTH make wide radius S gauge track?

S-Trax also comes in R25 35-1008

John

While MTH shows the 35-1008 mid-sized curved track in their catalog, I can't verify that they ever actually produced any of it, because whenever we try to order it through our local MTH dealer, that number doesn't show up on the MTH inventory/order webpage. Has anyone ever actually received any of this product from MTH?

Bill in FtL

I have a lot of the 25" radius S-Trax curves so had to I search my receipts.  I bought a set of the MTH 35-1008 from Jamestown Trains in July 2016.  The rest are probably S-Helper.

Craig

RoyBoy posted:

Brendan posted:

I ordered a circle of R27 track from Marios last year.  Four were bad.

Brendan

Four were bad as in having the spikes too high, or were they bad another way?

Does MTH make wide radius S gauge track?

Spikes too high.

Brendan

ctomita posted:

I have a lot of the 25" radius S-Trax curves so had to I search my receipts.  I bought a set of the MTH 35-1008 from Jamestown Trains in July 2016.  The rest are probably S-Helper.

Craig

Likewise for me.  I brought some of the MTH branded R25 curves a few years ago.  Doesn't mean they produced any new stuff, though.

Brendan

MTH also makes flex track using the same .138 rail if you want to bend your own. Of course it does not have the nice plastic roadbed.

AmFlyer posted:

MTH also makes flex track using the same .138 rail if you want to bend your own. Of course it does not have the nice plastic roadbed.

Or you could use Fox Valley track.

Rusty