What is rerailer track?
Good luck to both you and husband, Miss Argentina. It should a fun Christmas season.
Regarding your budget of $50 to $60, that’s about what I started out with when I got into HO scale modeling. My cumulative spending on this hobby, some 17 years later, would have been enough to buy a new car. So, in some ways, you better hope that your hubby doesn’t get too enthusiastic about his new hobby. [(-D]
Rich
Well not sure if it was the right way to go, but for now its the way I went! We have a 4x4 piece of ply, we’ve got cork, we’ve got sheet insulation (we build theater sets) so we can mount whatever we need to. And I was able to get it cheap - I think that was the deciding factor. Yes it’s code 100 [:$] but I think we’ve established this train ain’t supposed to be high end, maw. So…Atlas code 100 nickel-silver 18 degree curves and straight terminal track. Got it for a steal. I’m going to see what happens with conductivity patching it with the brass stuff that’s coming with the train. If need be we’ll snag 3 pieces of silver nickel straight-aways. So I’ll document the whole thing and share our nostalgic adventures of this kiddie railway with you! I hope the process makes us smile and not curse! (also I feel a little guilty because I kinda think this will be a present for me too in a sense). Stay tuned!
Claudia
Me too. Do you dabble in miniatures in other ways than Model Railroading?
-Kevin
A rerailer is a track with wedges leading into it. It is designed to guide dragging equipment back onto the rails.
They work occassionally at best. They also look like car crossings, so that can be fun.
-Kevin
Wait a minute!
Claudia, this will be a present for you too???
And your budget is $50 to $60?
What is wrong with you, girl?
You gotta set your sights higher than that. [(-D]
By the way, and don’t get me wrong, Claudia is a very nice name. But I was sorta hoping that it would be Evita.
Rich
Nobody is telling her to get DCC? [}:)] [}:)]
Inside joke Claudia, it won’t fit the budget, that’s as much as you need to know.
Had that car, too.
Very handy, especially for the inexperienced. I recommend getting one at least. They work well unless the derailment is quite bad. Often such a bad derailment also shorts the power anyway so, within limits, the rerailer track is well worth installing. Standard packaging from Atlas gets you three 9" rerailer straights. Some hobby shops break out these into single track pieces.
They work well enough that the rerailer will help if you are planning to run a train continuously and maybe not always attended.
A rerailer track makes it simple to put cars on the track. Isn’t it a rule that a derailement never happens right before the rerailer? [:D]
It’s not that hard to put a car on the tracks but in your case, the top of the rail is going to be on a level with you big toe nail.
The one in the picture was a lucky find on ebay. The seller had the description wrong. It was an ancient Tyco red box model that had never been out of the package. It is in pristine condition.
It was less than $10.00 including shipping!
-Kevin
Hi all! Well everything came in, I wrapped it up real pretty-like, and he’s getting it set up with no issues until…It was actually a NEW piece I ordered that gave out. It’s the straight terminal track from Atlas. one of the contact screws is spinning spinning spinning in it’s nut/rivet/hole/? They’re both spinning together non-stop and it’s so tiny everything We’ve tried has not worked. (For the record I did suggest setting up the terminal and transformer first). Suggestions? Anyone had this issue?
If you have any white Teflon tape, also called “thread tape”, laying around, wrap a thin piece around the screw and try that method. Since the screw is so small, it will be a bit delicate to apply, but it should work.
Rich
Not sure how that will separate it from the spinning nut it seems to be connected to. They’re spinning together. This is the track I’m talking about. I can take a close up pic of the terminal tomorrow if that helps anyone.
Ahh, both the screw and nut are spinning. Not good. And, you indicate that you cannot get hold of the nut in order to get the screw out. If it were me, I would return it for a new one, or just buy a new one. Christmas is only a week away. No time to mess around with faulty equipment.
Rich
Code 100 must be different to the Code 83 version Atlas just released.
Sounds like Atlas is using their pesky captive nut embedded in plastic ss they do for their electrical switch products. The nut strips out of the hexagonal mounting recess far too easily. Poor design asking plastic to retain metal nuts.
For me, and assuming you can reach the backside of the nut, I try to jam a very thin blade screwdriver between a side of the nut and the plastic recess in order to stop the nut turning by just enough to get the screw tight. You’ll encounter the same difficulty though when you disconnect and reconnect the wires. This method should get you up and running.
If you have an epoxy glue you might fill the edges of the recess that holds the nut by enough to get the nut to stay put. You might end up with the screw, nut and plastic all welded together which kind of defeats the convenience of the terminal track though.
The only easy solution is to buy a replacement piece of track. The design is still very poor though. It takes very little extra twist force from your tiny screwdriver to twist the nut out of relatively soft plastic.
Atlas “fixed” this design for Code 83 by pressing threads into the copper terminal strip itself. I’m sceptical there is enough strength in the pressed sheet copper but so far it works better than the captive nut system.
Two other approaches: you can use something like a razor saw to cut a small slot pointing in a nonessential and ‘nonweakening’ direction to align with one of the nut flats, then use a more solid screwdriver tip or piece of flat metal like the back of a knife blade to hold the nut from spinning; or you can carefully cut away plastic from around opposing flats to allow tips of a small pair of pliers to hold the nut across its diameter, which usually suffices. It seems to me that this latter could be done by drilling holes which could subsequently be filled by short pieces of copper wire, providing ‘keys’ to some number of the flats of the nut and spreading torque across a much larger area of the plastic, but that might be overkill in this context.
I have used a small amount of epoxy like J-B Weld carefully buttered around the periphery of a rounded-out hex recess in plastic, with the nut then carefully set into this and any raised material smoothed down against and over it. When this has set up completely (over about 24hr to ultimate strength, whatever is on the package specs) it provides flats much more resistant to being ‘cammed out’ than the original plastic was.
Remember it is likely that the other screw, at some point, may develop comparable difficulty, and it might be wise to butter its nut in, too, with epoxy or comparable material to secure it from trying to turn. This is a very small amount of adhesive, perhaps a couple of toothpick-tips’ worth.
One more little note: it is possible to use longer screws in these terminals, and if you have any room “under” the track grade, you can provide washers in the stripped-out recess and a nut that can be easily
So we went to a local hobby train shop and we came home with some terminal rail joiners and it’s working like a charm! Not sure if it’s the best choice but it’s working! 
He seems pretty happy.
That’s likely a fine solution for your purposes, and reusable as well. (You can also use these for feeder connections if at any point you observe hesitant operation due to poor electrical connection between track pieces…)
That’s all that matters. He’s happy. You did the right thing to get a new one and not mess with a broken one. [(-D]
Rich