Model Railway Forum

Spent most of the day adding point motors to the new goods sidings. I made things difficult for myself by forgetting to drill holes for underboard motors (although one does sit right over a crossmember - lousy planning) so I have been forced to use surface mounted motors.

Rails of Sheffield recently introduced their own range of motors, and as they were on special offer this week, I thought I’d give them a try.
I think there is a good reason why they are on offer - they’re not very good.

I tested them before fitting and one was very quiet while the other gave a good solid clunk when thrown. The loud one works well to throw the point and trigger a microswitch, but likes to jam solid every three or four throws, calling for the hand of God to intervene.
The quiet motor doesn’t seem to have enough oomph to throw the point. The solenoids move the internal levers but just doesn’t have any impact on moving the point.

I will contact Rails tomorrow but has anyone else had any experience of their motors?

Hi Steve
What are they like in free air - They should "Pop" over and back without any effort. Surface motors are notorious for needing not to be fixed down too tightly and of course a CDU will always help. But I guess you know this already. Just thought I would post for others enlightenment.
I've moved to Servos and removing the points over centre spring. Lovely slow motion and fairly quite too

Yes Brian, a good ‘pop’ from one bit the other just seems lethargic and loose. I have a CDU (as you would expect) and have tried loosening the screws but I suspect there are more fundamental flaws.
Depending on the response from Rails I will probably swap them out for the Peco ones which have never caused me an issue in the past.
I was attracted to the ‘blurb’ from Rails claiming these motors are more compact - they’re not!

Brian wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 4:10 pm I've moved to Servos and removing the points over centre spring. Lovely slow motion and fairly quite too

I too have changed to servo motors. Much quieter in operation. R-

I can't say I wasn't tempted to use servos when I started West Orton, but a ready supply of Seeps salvaged from Shaddeholme and having read a few posts where servos proved challenging, I decided to stick with what I know.

Anyway, back to the Rails PM saga. Rails suggested I contact DCC Concepts and they in turn, have suggested I return them to them for 'inspection'. I wonder whatever happened to a good old fashioned refund?
However, I am happy to play their game for the time being so I've sent them off today.

In the meantime I ordered two Peco PL11 motors from Derails (first time I've used them as a supplier) which arrived today, were immediately fitted and worked straight out of the box with no issues whatsoever.

Which rather proves my point of sticking with what you know.

All thats left is to add some ballast and sand around the motor, paint and some scruffy foliage for camouflage and we should be good to go.

The only slight downside with servos is unless you have a micro-switch arrangement or something you do not always know the point has moved at all, let alone sufficiently. There is normally not much sound to let you know rail contact has been made. Other than that I can’t fault the system. R-

The installation of the Peco surface point motors has been finished off with som camouflage - a mix of static grass and some sea foam scrub bushes which form a nice canopy that still allows the motors to operate freely.
And there’s a sneaky 8F that fell into my eBay basket the other day. It should end up being sound fitted with some light weathering in the next few weeks.

2022-03-11_11-57-14 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

Great picture Steve, and a first class job of hiding the point motors - well done.

Great looking picture, Steve. Well done.

Glencairn

What point motors ?….., excellent job of hiding them and the headshunt has turned out really well.