My new layout will be built with code 83 track. Most of the switchs I have looked at are code 100 or code 70. Which would work better with the code 83 track? Thanks.
What scale and brands of turnouts and track are you looking at? Micro Engineering, Atlas and Walthers all offer code 83 turnouts in HO. I don’t know about your skill level, but staying with one code of rail is a good idea if you’re not experienced in laying trackwork. I model in HO and use codes 83, 70 and 55, plus some 100 in staging. I try to change rail code at least a few inches away from a turnout wherever practical to avoid alignment problems at turnouts where they’re most likely to cause derailments.
Atlas and Peco make Code 83 turnouts. Peco are more costly, but I think they look somewhat better, and they are very reliable. I have no real experience using Atlas Code 83 turnouts, but I do know they have a strong fan base…hard to beat that.
Crandell
[#welcome]
Walthers is here http://www.walthers.com/ and Atlas is here http://www.atlasrr.com/
On the Walthers site you can search for 83 turnouts to get quite a listing including Atlas, Peco, ME, and Walther’s Shinohara as well as BK Enterprises.
Note: BK Enterprises are NOT RTR they must be spiked/glued to ties.
Good luck
Paul
My advice is to keep looking. Code 83 has become more popular than Code 100 and the availabilty of turnouts is greater in Code 83 than in Code 100. This would include not only standard turnouts but also single and double slips, double crossovers, wyes, 3-ways, curved turnouts, etc.
Rich
[#welcome] Welcome aboard!
Or maybe I should say, welcome to becoming a participant rather than a lurker.
Since you seem to have had some layout building experience before, might I humbly suggest that you try rolling your own specialwork? It isn’t an exotic skill practiced by wizards mumbling enchantments in the dark of the moon. Even this arthritic old coot can do it.
The biggest advantage, in my admittedly biased opinion, is that the one key turnout that you need to get operating is never going to be out of stock/on backorder from Lower Slobbovia/subject to delivery by camel caravan. It’ll be right there on your worktop, in the form of raw rail, pre-cut ties and a few tools which you will have to have if you intend to do any kind of tracklaying except snap-track.
There have been a lot of threads on hand-laying. My own quick and dirty technique is explained in a post which can be reached by going to my home page and typing, “You called” (including the quotes) into the search block. The post you want is dated 2007.
I will admit that there is a learning curve to hand-laying specialwork, but it isn’t anywhere near as steep as some I have encountered. Then, once you can lay your own, you can build smooth, flowing trackwork without the compromises inherent in using commercial products. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - mostly Atlas flex, hand-laid specialwork)
I second TomikawaTT’s point here. Simply perusing all of the extremely pertinent and, quite frankly, mind boggling detailed modeling information freely presented on this forum through the search function is completely useless unless you post a question. You will never acquire the knowledge you seek otherwise. [:-^]
That said, all of the above posts offer a wealth of alternatives to your question that I couldn’t answer without being redundant.
I’ve used mostly Code 100 Shinohara switches. The difficulty is that they do not come set up for routing power. The short coming to Code 83 is the lack of single crossovers. I like the Code 83 Shinohara switches that Walthers private labels. To transition between code 83 and 100 there are short straight transition pieces you can buy. Alternatively you can shim the low side with 0.015 styrene sheet to bring the rail heads to match. If you use black styrene then the ballast easily hides the shims.
Hope this helps.
Cheers, RustyKen