I have an old 497 coaling station that I would like to put in my yard. My trackage is all Gargraves. Any ideas as to how to hook up the station with this track, or should I use Lionel O gauge sections underneath the station?
Thanks.
Jeff
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O-27 is a better match for GarGraves, but I have seen someone cut/notch the ties on GarGraves to accommodate the activation rails in the base of the 497, it may have Jim Barrett in an article some years ago. Another thread HERE.
If you are using GG track and GG or Ross switches, the accessory shoes on all your Lionel cars have probably been ripped off or disabled. So there be no reason to worry about how to make the accessory rails usable. You might want to consider how you are going to get the 3469 cars to dump. The 3459 cars will not work as the 497, as designed, because the accessory shoes are too far apart.
David could you please explain why the shoes would get disabled from gargraves track as that is what I am planing to use on my next layout.
The problem is with the switches, not the track. If you look at the Lionel switches you will see where Lionel provides ramps on both sides of the center rail to push the accessory shoes up over the rails that have to be crossed in switches and crossings. the GG and Ross switches are not designed like this. At York one year I discussed this with a gentlemen at the Ross booth. He said I would need to glue all my accessory shoes up so that did not get snagged on his switches. If you read back through various threads here you will find where some people make home made ramps to try and address this issue. I decided to protect my equipment I would stay with tubular switches and started buying 0-72 switches. I think has worked well for me as the later prewar 0-72 switches are about the finest switch you can get.
if you have post war equipment, do some more research or buy a test switch to see how it will work for you before you get to far into non Lionel switches.
,I don't believe Ross told you to glue your pick up shoes.
This is right from their website:
Will my slide shoes pick your switch?
They may. That depends on your piece. Lionel had no standards for slide shoes. Remember they were building toys and did not conceive of the fantastic choices you would have for building a hi-rail layout today. Some of those shoes hang down too low, some hang more to the right and some hang more to the left. Real railroads cannot have equipment hanging down between the rails. This would lead to disaster. When building a turnout that looks and acts as prototypically as RCS turnouts do, slide shoes can be a problem.
That said, we have eliminated many of the trouble spots for slide shoes. We have ramps milled into the wing rails of the frogs and our guard rails are slightly lower than the main rails. If you are going to have trouble it will be on the ends of the black center rails in the middle of the switch. There is a fix. We urge you push your slide shoe equipment through and if there is a catch you can either bevel down the ends of those center rails with a dremel or stick our regular #903 flat track pins in the ends of the rails and bend it down slightly. This will ramp up and over a stray shoe. We like to take a fine file and be sure there are no burrs on top of the rail where the pin goes in.
Please note that no company has defeated all slide shoe issues, even Lionel who designed them in the first place!
Also Jim Barrett had an article a few years ago where he took a Dremel and beveled the ends of the pick up shoes and made them work!
The Ross switches may not work right out of the box but with a little tweaking they will work great!
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