Track component suppliers

[adigill]

Well thought it was about time that I got on with some track laying so got out the box of bits to see what I've got in stock and what I need. Having worked out what is required I turned to the C and L website as I intend going to the Warley show at the weekend and get some bit's, now here's the thing I thought my eyesite needed checking £48.00 pound for a turnout kit!!!! The last ones I bought were from the P4 track company and were £25.00 each, when did they nearly double in price?. I understand that the cost of materials may have gone up but really that much? So is there anyone else making track components or have C&L got the monopoly.

[Colin Parks]

Hi Adigill,

It gets worse:

Does the turnout kit you have quoted include VAT? The C&L website has prices which are ex-VAT, so that makes your chosen kit come in at £57.60. Strangely, I cannot find anywhere on their website that mentions the fact - until you get to the checkout.

Colin

[grovenor-2685]

If you want nice detailed plastic chairs then C&L are the only game in town, if you want to try the etched version then you have Masokits, and for Flatbottom track, Colin Craig.

The price rises came in with the takeover by C&L of the Exactoscale line. First thing is to learn to file up your own crossings and blades, the pre-made ones are a substantial part of the kit costs, so once you can do your own you make a saving and are no longer restricted to the kits available.

If you can go with ply and rivet and add cosmetic chairs whenever the opportunity to buy seconds appears then you can get your supplies from the Scalefour Stores, but note rivets have shared in the cost escalation so its worth keeping an eye on eBay.
Keith

[David Thorpe]

The C&L website has prices which are ex-VAT, so that makes your chosen kit come in at £57.60. Strangely, I cannot find anywhere on their website that mentions the fact

I don't think that's right, Colin. The prices shown on the website include VAT. When you go to your basket (and thence to checkout) the price shown is the net price plus the VAT element. Accordingly, if you order chairs (shown as £23) the checkout will show it as £19.17 plus £3.83 VAT, making a total of £23. Similarily, your £48 point kit (less £4 if you don't want the gauge) shows up as £40 plus £8 VAT.

Mind you, I was a bit horrified to note that a meter of track with ply sleeper, plain n/s rail and plastic chairs now works out at a shade under £16. Peco code 75 (also from C&L) is £2.90 a metre - perhaps that's one of the reasons people feel reluctant to abandon 00. I hasten to add that I'm not suggesting for a moment that C&L are ripping anyone off - rather it's just down to (wait for it) economy of scale.

DT

[grovenor-2685]

Mind you, I was a bit horrified to note that a meter of track with ply sleeper, plain n/s rail and plastic chairs now works out at a shade under £16. Peco code 75 (also from C&L) is £2.90 a metre

Perhaps a better comparison is withthe C&L flextrack which is 5.50 a metre, then its up to you to consider if using ply sleepers and individual chairs gives enough benefit to justify being 3 times the price.
Keith

[Terry Bendall]

I thought my eyesite needed checking £48.00 pound for a turnout kit!!!!

Unfortunately that is the price. i bought some a couple of weeks ago and was surprised, and yes the web site is not clear about the VAT. When I was talking to Pete Llewellyn a while back he did say that he would have to increase the price to reflect current production costs. Whilst it is a lot of money, the advantage is that they work first time every time. However in future I am likely to build my own,

I intend going to the Warley show at the weekend

The Society stand will be at the show staffed by Mike Ainsworth, David Brandreth and Danny Cockling and I will be on the Rail Express stand.

Terry Bendall

[grovenor-2685]

Perhaps a better comparison is withthe C&L flextrack which is 5.50 a metre,

And the real oddity is that buying the plasic bases and rail seperately to avoid paying for assembly puts the price up to £6.30, so you pay 0.80 a metre to slide the rails in yourself (and its a miserable job with the C&L bases, OK with the P4 track Co version).
And, incidentally, the £16 you calculated for plain line does not seem to allow for the rail
Ply sleepers £6/100, Plastic sleepers C&L £5/100, Plastic sleepers P4 NewTrack, £5.60, Chairs £10, Rail £2.10
So per metre, £18.10, £17.10, or £17.70 depending on choice of sleepers.
I'm glad I don't need any more.
Keith

[David Thorpe]

My calculations were based on prices for the large size packs, Keith. If I remember correctly, when I made my track there were 102 sleepers per metre. At £20 for 500, that's £4.08. Chairs are £23 for 500 - 204 therefore comes to £9.38. Rail (basic n/s, although I used the HiNi at a pound more) is £11 for 10 metres, so that's £2.20. Add that all up and it's £15.66. Buy the small size packs and your figures are of course correct. Sleepers from the Society were a lot cheaper but they've been out of stock for some time now.

DT

[Albert Hall]

Peco code 75 (also from C&L) is £2.90 a metre

DT

A minor point but you only get 36" for your £2.90 with Peco whereas C&L track comes in metre lengths.

[Colin Parks]

Hi Adigill,

It gets worse:

Does the turnout kit you have quoted include VAT? The C&L website has prices which are ex-VAT, so that makes your chosen kit come in at £57.60. Strangely, I cannot find anywhere on their website that mentions the fact - until you get to the checkout.

Colin

No, I have got this wrong. I wish I had re-checked my C&L invoice first!

Colin

[adigill]

I do have the vee and blade filing jig but haven't got to grips with them yet. I just don't understand why a point kit is so expensive when an SMP OO kit is about £6.00 maybe is time to go back to that gauge! If the Lancs and Yorks layout "Calderwood" that I saw run perfectly all day at the Hull model railway show the other week is anything to go buy it might not be a bad decision.

[grovenor-2685]

I just don't understand why a point kit is so expensive when an SMP OO kit is about £6.00

Just compare what you get in the respective kits.
Then get to grips with your filing jigs, there is no need for kits, there is plenty of help for building turnouts, on here, in the Scalefour Digest, on RMweb, you name it.
Step by step here, http://www.norgrove.me.uk/points.html using ply and tivet, the filing, bending, gauging etc is just the same for plastic chairs, just the fixing differs.
Keith

[Terry Bendall]

Just compare what you get in the respective kits.

Very sound advice. I don't know what is in an SMP kit and the web site does not give any information - or at least I could not see any. To my mind an Exactoscale kit is a far better product than those with the C&L branding and you do get every piece of rail cut to length, every sleeper the correct length and all the correct chairs. Building your own turnouts is not that difficult but it needs a bit of care and the development of some skills, both of which will come in useful for other aspects of railway modelling. To me it is the appearance of P4 track that scores every time.

If the Lancs and Yorks layout "Calderwood" that I saw run perfectly all day at the Hull model railway show the other week is anything to go buy it might not be a bad decision.

I have seen this layout and yes it is very nice and runs well. I have seen other pre-grouping layouts in OO that also run well but to me the work that has gone into building the stock, which by its nature will either be made from kits or from scratch, is spoilt by running the stock on OO track.

maybe is time to go back to that gauge!

Your train set, your decision.

Terry Bendall

[JFS]

...

maybe is time to go back to [OO] gauge! If the Lancs and Yorks layout "Calderwood" that I saw run perfectly all day at the Hull model railway show the other week is anything to go buy it might not be a bad decision.

I would like to understand what point you are making here please?

Calderwood may well be OO, but its track - which is absolutely excellent - is entirely hand built. It is therefore neither cheaper nor easier to build than P4 track. It runs so well NOT because it is OO but because its track is well constructed.

I might also mention (because I know it to be a fact) that the ONLY reason the Calderwood was NOT built to P4 standard is because there was already a vast amount of stock which would have required difficult and expensive conversion.

Calderwood is a probably the best demonstration that the the real benefit in terms of appearance comes not from the choice of track gauge, but from the decision to hand build track to a good standard using the best components REGARDLESS of gauge. It bears absolutely no comparison to anything built with PECO streamline or SMP!!

Just to indicate that I speak from experience, here is some OO track I built for a mate.

Track 3.jpg

So, for what it is worth, take it from me - if you can't build reliable track in P4, your OO will neither run nor look anything like Calderwood's!!

Best wishes,

[Colin Parks]

Hmm. Now I don't know much about VAT, but I do know about SMP point kits adigill! (I assume we are talking about the plastic based ones, given the price quoted.)

I built an exhibition layout with SMP track and points. Apart from one PCB/soldered construction double slip, all the points were from SMP plastic-based kits. The layout ran very well and still does. The plain track looked very well indeed. but the points bore little resemblance to the real thing in my opinion. Also the range is restricted to left and right hand 3ft radius points, with additional catch point kits available which amount to half a turnout kit. The greatly improved appearance of the track is why I turned to P4 this year.

Yes, C&L track work is relatively expensive, but given the vast range of components and the tooling costs for such a number of moulds, we are lucky to have them. With the use of the right components and some practice at filing rails, any turnout or point formation is possible using C&L parts.

Colin

[Simon_S]

Don't forget that the Exactoscale point kits come with a vast amount of surplus chairs that can be used for other projects; the three-way and double-slip on Moor Street were built almost entirely (barring two chairs) from the surplus from just three kits. This greatly enhances their true value.

[philip-griffiths]

While I tend to agree with Keith (always a wise choice), that is build your own by learning to file, the chair components in the P4 track co. products are excellent and you get a wide range so you do not have to butcher ordinary chairs to get the specials.

Wish I'd had bought more of the products from Andrew when I had the chance.

Regards.

[Hardwicke]

Perhaps that is the problem with modellers. They didn't see the true value of the turnouts and delayed buying them, I know someone who wanted 30+ points but it is now a non starter of a project. I did buy them when Andrew had it, but only have three spare turnouts left now. I'm not happy about the price hike either and feel it discourages easier modelling. On the other hand, I saw a local show the other week and it was all 00 or N. The running was atrocious. Peco track and RTR fails unless you are running constantly at 80mph and no shunting. Simple as that but the modellers accept it. They see P4 with it's claims and go "Look! It doesn't work".