I build all my turnouts whith semi handled turnouts whith Fastrack jigs.
They are extremely great and helpful especialy for N scale.
I own jig for curved, wye and straight turnout in n°6 and n°8 and a custom made curved one n°8 with radius of 40 & 46.5 cm sorry I am belgian).
Most of my roster is steam, last generation steam, three brass from the 2000’s and plastic ones from Walthers, Kato, Bachmann Spectrum, Athearn and Model Power, all acquired between 2007 and today.
They all run well and are far better than the old Rivarossi generation. One of the best achievements is the wheels, no more pizza cutter and really fine wheels on the locos.
One of the best news whith these locos is the fact they are nearly all in gauge whith the NMRA settings.
Whith my experience, I can say 95% of the locos are in gauge straight from the box. However 60% of the tenders have a set of wheels out of gauge. I regauged all the tenders wheels whith an NMRA Nscale gauge; not really a problem even whith the few loco’s wheels.
Fastrack turnout jigs are exactly NMRA gauged and it’s also great for Nscale.
However, if a diesel run well through them whitout problems, it’s not the case whith steam loco’s.
The wheel must have some lateral play on a steam loco and the rigid base of a 2-8-0 or 4-8-2 or 2-10-2 need some lateral play, first for the running gear to play correctly but also to negotiate curve. Also the torque of the motor and the gear play can push a set of wheel slightly on one side. Correct this play is extremely difficult on Nscale engines, so I prefer to live whith, since the wheels are well gauged.
Unfortunately the play is not tolerate on the Fastrack turnouts which are full close to the gauge.
After a while I have found a way to correct this whithout really changing the Fastrack instructions.
Two change are simply needed, more space on the frog, more space between gard rails and stock rails.<
