I havebeen having the usual problems with Aristocraft track screws. The constant bending over…the profanity at the loss of a screw into the aether of ballast!!!
but I had a stroke of genius…my brother has some special clay that is used in detailing cars. I got some on my fingers and it had an almost stick consistancy.
I then got a small ball of it an put it in the hex hole of the screw. It stuck…albiet not well. But it did stay long enough to get in the screw hole and turned a normally difficult job into a quick one.
I don’t know if it will work for you…but it did a good job for me.
I did notice that the new screws with a deeper hex stay on the wrench much better.
I will try some detail clay next time, I have some in my garage.
Bud[8D]
I used elmer’s glue stick when I still used the screws. Cheeeeep! basically a thickened white glue, would hold scres enough to get them started. Weather would disintegrate leftover glue in a souple of rainstorms! Just a tiny dab on end of driver before putting screw on!
I’ve been able to re-use some of the wax the screws come in to stick them to the screwdriver. That was one of those “my kingdom for a magnetized screwdriver” jobs.
I’ve used small blobs of liquid nails or latex caulking, too. Just about anything that is sticky will work. The worst part is having to wear knee pads and practically stand on my head in order to see the hole that the screw goes into. I learned that one trick is to spread a newspaper out under the rail joint to catch dropped screws.
I have a large, very powerful magnet out of a microwave oven magnetron but these Aristo screws are stainless or brass and aren’t attracted by a magnet.
Exactally, that was my first step, but I was loosing screws like a politician and US Government TAX dollars… Some sort of way to improve the screw.linkage ratio is what i have discovered.
I just used a little dab of LGB conductive grease on the end of the aristo screwdriver to hold the little begger in place on the screwdriver. Outside I preassembled most of it in sections, carried the sections over then used railclamps to tie it together. But even that was a pain.
If you can find the right sized hexhead with a magnetic head, that hold be the best thing for it.
I do not talk about my area 2 very much, this is the original one that I put down 2 years ago.
Most of it is LGB or club rail that i have used lgb rail joiners on. but about 10 % of it is Aristo and i have had nothing but trouble with conductivity in that area.
What i did was to remove the whole lot and get it up an a table and completely disassemble the whole thing. The joiners were all full of dirt and the screws were loose and conductivity was unreliable and pretty poor.
I undid every screw cleaned they whole lot and assembled the lot on their side so that getting the Alan screws in, it was a breeze; then i placed it back where it was.
I am not sayimg a word abou the poor quality of the Aristo joiners as that is not true, they were pretty good really. However initially I found them hard to solder but i was able to solder all the LGB joiners and I had no trouble with them at all.
The whole thng is in and working and it is running very well with no conductivity problems at all.