Hello Fellow Railroaders,
I have a question for you Folks. Can I use a Tortoise Switch Machine in place of a Fastrack Switch Track? Please let me know what you can find out.
Sincerely
Allan
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Apples and oranges. The Tortoise switch machine is just the actuator that moves the switch rails. The Fastrack switch is the whole switch, including the switch machine.
The short answer is no.
If you're thinking of using the tortise switch machine on a Fastrack switch, I suppose anything's possible if you have enough time and the inclination, but it's not the first thing that comes to my mind. Once you get them working, the Fastrack switch is pretty reliable, I don't see the gain in replacing just the switch machine parts.
If you do use the Tortoise brand of switch machine you will have to adjust it to work with the Fastrack switch. If you can adjust the Tortoise switch machine to your Fastrack switch I think you will like the results better then the Fastrack switch motor.
Lee Fritz
Allan,
Two different engineering set ups that really would take a lot of work to combine and probably would not be worth doing. The FasTrack Command Control Switches work well, once in a while one is delivered with a faulty sending unit, which Lionel then replaces the entire switch. In 8 years now I have only had one FTCC switch actually fail, so they are pretty darn reliable.
PCRR/Dave
Thank you Dave for the information about Fastrack switches. I don't have any Fastrack but I sold off what I did have a few years ago. I hope that the Fastrack switches work very well.
The older Lionel switches in O gauge from around 1992 to 1996, number 6-23010 and 6-23011 were the worst switches I have ever bought. I tried many ways to keep those switches working but they just kept doing more & more strange things until I finally removed them from the layout and sold them off.
Lee Fritz
