I am about to begin on my layout based on the Pennsylvania railroad circa 1940, primarily of the eastern region in and around Philadelphia. I plan on a great deal of complex trackwork requiring hand laying techniques. Can anyone guide me to where I can find a Kadee twin spiker for my code 83 and 70 rails.
Thanks
Bnews
Good luck finding one. Kadee has not made that product in years. They do have some of the ‘parts’ available via their web site. A fast check of eBay listed nothing for sale at this time. A friend had one back in the 70’s. One had to be very careful with the ‘force’ setting or you could drive the spikes through the ties. Consistant tie density was quite important. I know his Campbell Products ties varied all over the place. He ‘crushed’ a lot of ties before he found the right setting/material. Not sure where he found tie mateial that was consistant. But remember, there are different ‘heads’ for different code rail.
Jim
Like he said, good luck finding one, I think I got mine just before they became totally unavailable. There’s two sizes of “spikes” which are actually a narrow staple that the spiker cuts out the center as it fires it out. The ones for Code 70 are also used on Code 83 track, but with some different parts. The Code 100 ones are used only on that size rail. My spiker came with instructions how to convert it and I bought all the pieces to do all three sizes of rail. And yes, it does take some practice to get satisfactory results.
Try writing or emailing Kadee to find out if you can get one as a “kit.” The worst they can do is to say no.
Are you sure you want one? From what I’ve heard over the years, the spiker was great in theory but sad in practice. The marketplace made a summary decision decades ago.
Mark
The reason they stopped making them is liability and they will not send you a kit, I tried. The question dose come up, why bother as newer stuff is better and faster as the spiker had a steep learning curve to get good at it.
Too bad-- there was one about two days ago that just finished up-- it went for around $295 (I don’t know if that was the final price, but that’s what it was up to the last time I looked).
There had also been several others for sale in the previous couple of weeks. There are or just were a bunch of boxes of various size spikes for the thing too.
You can always set up a personalized search on ebay (in your MyEbay->Searches section) and then have the results mailed to you. That’s how I find a lot of stuff.