I have about 80 of them in use. Easy to install - very reliable. Most the guys I know use them. Cost, lack of aux. contacts and the visible crank are the downside. Not sure why we don’t hear more about them here. Guy
I have used them and I still have some for special purposes. The Tortoise became popular because it was made for Model Railroading, advertised more, and has aux contacts.
In the late 80s I was building a layout with Atlas code 100 track and turnouts and had read about Hankscraft motors for turnout control. I ran across a box of the motors at a garage sale and bought the whole box, a couple dozen. Some of the motors appeared new and others were obviously used, but all had multi D cell battery tubes and set screw shaft couplers attached, so I assumed they were for some sort of advertising display.
Turned out the motors had a high gear ratio and weren’t slowmotion, but by adding a resistor was able to slow them down some and use them for turnout control. Those motors were robust and powerful and only two of them failed over the years, but when that layout was torn down in 2011 the orig. 18 were still working. If it weren’t for wanting simple aux contacts for frog power, easy DCC decoder connection and a softer throw I’d have reused those motors.
I still use them for nearly all of my switch machines. I have two Tortoises and much prefer the Switchmaster incarnation of the Hankscraft motors. Builders in Scale still lists them http://www.builders-in-scale.com/bis/sm-home.html .
Ah, the “black motors” as they are called at the club. Or rather, the “expletive black motors”. The bane of our existance. We had a bunch of them, and are replacing them all as they fail with Torti. We needed the contacts so little microswitches were mounted next to the motors. A pain to keep adjusted, and difficult to install working overhead under a 30 year old layout with a plethora of obstructions.
Plus the kits we had had plastic operating rods that liked to have their shaft holes rounded out, even though we had resistors limiting the voltage to the motor.
In our opinion those things aren’t even suitable as fishing weights.
When our HO scale club’s layout was being built, we purchased some of those motors that were being sold under the brand names of ‘Torquemaster’ and ‘Switchmaster.’ After 15 years, three or four are still in use and have performed reliably for all those years. They did require 10 Watt power resistors to slow them down to a more reasonable speed and lower their torque so they didn’t twist the actuating arm.
I’ve been using RC servos from Tam Valley Depot and have been very happy with them. Nice, slow motion throws, and even factoring in the fascia switches and contoller, still much cheaper than Tortoises. If you need a spare part, anyplace selling RC kits can usually help.
I used them on one end of my staging tracks. I mounted them using the Rix Rax #21 mounting pads - They have provisions for adding 2 micro switches so that they are equal to the Tortoise in function. The problems I see using them are:
High cost when adding the micro switches & mounting pad(the Hankscroft motor is more expensive to start with).
The motor stall current is too high to use LED’s(even with the suggested resistor).
I can buy used Tortoises are train shows/meets for $5-$10 each and they are industructable.