Hello, Does anyone have opinions regarding Lionel's FasTrak? Good - bad - indifferent? I recently ordered a Polar Express set for a shelf railroad that will be constructed in a portion of my HO trainroom. Strictly for my grandkids, of course. The set comes with this new type track (0-36 curves), and I ordered about 50 ft more of straights to complete the oval for the run. Any thoughts will be appreciated. Thanx!
I like it, easy to put up and down, stays together better than the original track and I also like the power connection better than the old one. I also picked up the Polar Express set and ordered the other two cars to go with it that are offered in the catalog. The idea is to use it at christmas time around the tree for the kids and in the train room like you are around the ceiling. I will be puting it in a room that is 17' x 10'.
I have a buddy as well that is using the new track in his room and he has a bypass siding that he wants to deaden so that he can run two trains. How can he do this with the fast track? We are both complexed about this. I model HO and know how to do it in that, but Lionel I am not familiar with. Any ideas?
You might want to check the latest copy of O Gauge Railroading. Jim Barrett has a article on building a layout with Fastrack. There may be some help there.
Thanks faser, he picked up the magazine and is using it. Now another question for me. Since I am mainly an HO scale modeler I do not know the answer to this question. I am planning to put an O train around the ceiling of my train room. I would like it double track and I am wondering what the space I would need from the wall to the first set of track and what the space I would need inbetween the two sets of track to do this. I am planning on using fastrack for most of it and when I expand the outside rail to the whole basement I may need to use the old rail. Don't know yet still in planning stages.
Hello Kevin, I guess the first thing you need to consider is the equipment you will be running. The shorter the equipment the closer together you can have the tracks. I used to run my O27 trains with about a 3.5" seperation but that was with the old Lionel track. I also ran short diesels and the longest cars were my 6464 series box cars which if I recall correctly are 10". Currently I'm doing 2-Rail O scale and the smallest curve I'm using is the O72 or 36" radius. I'm also running longer cars than I used to. Keep us aprised of what you do and how it turns out. Greg Elems