I’ve been a little bit trapped the past couple of weeks, in that my car has been in the shop after a very minor accident (I won’t get it back until sometime this week). Anyway, yesterday Donna let me have her car yesterday, and I headed out to Peach Creek Shops, The Moose Caboose, JoAnne Fabric, Michael’s and Lowes.

At Peach Creek, I picked up two pair of Pilz/Tillig HOn30 switches and a few pieces of HOn30 flex track. I also had a good chance to look at Bachmann’s scenic items — particularly their line of trees. For smaller scales (HO included), they’ve got some really nice, affordable boxes of trees. I’ll certainly be using them on the HOn30 layout(s), and likely some will find their way to the On30 as well.

Tillig HOn30 Turnout (Bottom)

Tillig HOn30 Turnout (Top)

Back to the track. The Pilz/Tillig turnouts are really quite nice, and have a couple of unique features, the most notable being that they are flexible. Yes, you read that right. While they have a nominal 14″ radius diverging route, the entire turnout can be bent to create a curved turnout or a wye. A close look at the picture of the bottom of the turnout shows how that works.

Tillig have also seen fit to pre-install a solder tab so that the frog can be easily wired, and they include a pair of insulated rail joiners, a pair of regular rail joiners and a couple of extra solder tabs. Nifty.

There is a drawback to these turnouts over the Peco — some sort of switch throw is mandatory. While the Peco have an integrated hold-over spring, the Tillig’s have none. And, with the point rails being continuous into the frog, they tend to want to stay centered. That said, I do have a large quantity of micro-slide switches that I think I can attach to the bottom of the turnout. That would allow holding the points appropriately, and also be able to be used to route the power to the frogs.

Bachmann 32008-1 Elm Trees

The picture above shows one of the many types of Bachmann trees (they have almost 40 varieties/sizes). They really look better in person than they do in this picture, and will make excellent foreground HOn30 trees (and very good mid-ground On30 trees). They tend to be under $7 a box (typically three trees) at either Peach Creek or Moose Caboose. (For “background” trees on the HOn30, Scenic Express “Super Trees” will also be used — they’re really economical!).

I also stopped by The Moose Caboose to pick up a box of cork roadbed and see what other trouble I could get in to. Glenn did a good job, though, of keeping me in line (I think Donna must have called ahead!), though I did look around the shop to see what interesting HO stuff was there. Woodland Scenics have some beautiful built-ups, although they’re really expensive.

At JoAnne’s, I picked up a couple of rolls of moss ribbon. I have no idea what this stuff is intended for, but it looks like it’s going to be fantastic for making vines and ivy. From there, I moved on to Michaels, where I picked up about a half-dozen different kinds of floral wire (for tree-making) and some really tiny tools. Also, for tree-making, I picked up some masking tape and a couple of gray and brownish spray paints from Lowes.

All that was just about a hundred miles on Donna’s car. Can’t wait to get mine back from the shop!