I had a conversation the other day with a member on the use of rerailers (I’m sure he’ll chime in here on this topic). I told him that I was thinking about putting one in and he explained his reasons for having one on his layout. I agreed with him on the ease of railing cars and locos, especially with older eyesight. The con for me is unrealistic looks.
So I wondered…who uses them and why…and if you don’t use them, why not.
Why not use one? They look like road/rail crossings, paint them a brownish flat color, do some weathering and you have a crossing doing duty as a a rerailer.
We have a rerailer for our HO club layout. One place for people to put their stuff on the track. No details to be snagged.
Rich
I;ve heard people say nothing but bad things about rerailers. My club uses them mostly in the staging and in places where we can’t easily reach (or see) to fix a minor derailment before it becomes a major one.
Course, iinevitably, someone will point out that if you lay down sturdy track, you don;t need one. But their at least useful to appease the evil spirits.
I use a portable rerailer ramp from Rix. I can easily introduce cars and engines to the layout, but it’s not there when I don’t want it.
Derailments are cause by me forgetting to throw a turnout. It’s been a long, long time since I had a derailment caused by the track or trains themselves. Besides, Murphy would never have a rerailer where you would need one, would he?
I use them as grade crossings. In N scale, it just makes life easier. My track is pretty bulletproof, but sometimes with light cars and truck-mounted couplers, backup moves of long car cuts can apply less-than-favorable physics to train operations. But most of the time, I just use re-railers to put cars on the track.
Actually, one has saved my bum at Naptown a couple of times as I said in my above post, where scenery hhas not yet settled and reached out to tickle the trains. But generally, no. He doesn’t.
And I do love the portable rerailers.
Dave, nice road. I;m gonna remind myslef that’s just a portable layout. Maybe I’ll believe it
The grade crossing is something I never thought of Dave. What a great way to hide a derailer…thanks for sharing that one.
They work wonders when you’re working in n-scale; I use them as grade crossings also, and I also keep a handheld one. I think I may even be adding some more in the harder-to-reach areas of the layout [:)].
At my age, working in n-scale, I need all the help I can get!
Heh heh… Don’t need a special piece of track to derail a train![swg]
[#oops] Sometimes I think my fingers need to go back to typing class. My thinking was that a "rerailer" could be hidden just about anywhere with some ballast, but never gave any thought to using one as a grade crossing.
I’m one of those who can look at a wheelset 3 times and still miss a wheel that’s not sitting on the rail properly.
At the moment I have ONE rerailer - commercial product designed as such - in the lead of the shorter-tracked staging yard. At the moment it’s being used to put rolling stock on the rails, because cars that are already on the rails don’t derail in this area.
I will probably install others as construction proceeds, mostly in the form of vehicle crossings on visible track, and on tracks approaching danger points (tunnel portals, train elevator, concealed yard throats with tangent approaches) on hidden track.
Note that some prototype roads used rerailers as part of the guardrail arrangements in advance of through bridges - one way to keep those critical chokepoints from being damaged.
Note also that a rerailer isn’t anything arcane. The geometry can be reproduced with appropriately-bent guardrails, mounded ballast and ground goop. It doesn’t have to come from the LHS in a bubble-pack.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I plan on having rerailers on all of my staging tracks and on the straight sections of each level of my oval-shaped helix (all hidden trackage). For railing cars on “visible” track I will use a Rix rerailer. Jamie
At my Diamond Valley I’ve two derails:
A run away car should derail at this spot! [:)] [:)]
Wolfgang
I use them inside tunnels so you don’t see them.
I found them to be invaluable in N scale for getting rolling stock on the track. They do look like crossings.
So naturally, when I moved to HO scale, I also added them to my layout.
I use my road crossings as reailers around the layout. their easy to build and look better than the plastic thing in view. Also have a Rex reailer too.
I use and love my Rix-railer.
Nick