"Had I stayed with this layout and track system, I would still be sitting here with no turnouts. My God man, almost 2 1/2 years later and I WOULD STILL HAVE NO TURNOUTS!"
The alternative is spend a couple hours learning how to build your own then be free of buying them forever. I don't think turnouts are a huge deterrent to most scale modelers, Shinohara turnouts are available as are Fast tracks jigs and materials. Give them a better selection of locos and cars and most scale modelers could figure out how to deal with the track. Scratch building a turnout might take a couple of hours while scratch building a reefer could take a month or more of hobby time plus the difficulty of finding detail parts like ladders and brake gear. That's why a good selection of RTR cars are so important to the attractiveness of S to modelers contemplating what scale to build their layout or collection in.....DaveB
Track selection does make a difference.
Personally, I have no desire to hand lay track or build turnouts. I don't fault anyone who wants or likes to do it, but it's part of the "fun" of the hobby I'd rather do without.
The closest I got to hand laying track was putting in Old Pullman turnout kits (no longer available in S) where the Shinohora's wouldn't fit into my plan. I had to do a lot of tweaking on them to get them to work reliably. If I would have had to build my own turnouts, I would have not switched from HO to S.
Rusty
