With the National Garden Railway Convention coming up, and my RR one of the open houses, I needed to fix three of my turnouts. Two had no throws at all and one was an Aristo that didn’t work well. I ordered the Bachmann Large scale switch stands from Train World for on $10.99 each. They have three options for the mounting distance from the track, I chose the middle one. Switching out the standoff rod was a little tedious…need smaller fingers. One of the neat things about them is I now can tell, from a distance, the switch position.

Easy to follow instructions.

A few more projects and the RR will be ready for the open house. I learned from past experience that running one train is the safest way to avoid disaster during an open house. Looks like I’ll be running my slow and steady 3 Truck Shay with logs in tow. I think the switch stands are very cool.

camera angle makes picture #1 look like track is cantilevered the wrong way before getting to the switch. As always I am jealous of the nice climate layouts that have lush and green layouts, but that is the price I pay for living here. Nice looking layout, wish I could attend, this one looks to be spectacular from all the layouts I have seen !!!Good luck, hope for flawless running, Dan.

Thanks Pete,

The camera angle is the culprit in photo #1 (iphone) The track is level side to side, but, the photo is looking down a 4% grade. Photo #2 is looking upgrade and looks more natural.

Just bought some of these and can’t wait to use them…Thanks for the review Dan.

So what’s the bottom line, Dan ? How do you like the switch stands ? I was looking at them a few months ago but haven’t bought any yet.

Ive considered these for the indoor layout. The LGBs I currently have installed have extremely weak springs.

I have quite a few of these on the layout, inside and out… Have been replacing the tenmiles and my handmade throw mechanisms with them… I like the performance, design, added materials for extending the throw and the ease at adjusting the throw bars…

I have found, however that the connecting bar will raise up and disconnect with the point throw bar on occasion… I am now, using some metal rod and and bending both ends like a J with a more pronounced U shape at bottom of the J, then drilling a hole in the ties and inserting the bar across the connecting rod to keep it in a low position so it won’t lift out, after the throw is installed…

The bottom line is I really like the switch stands. They’re very heavy duty construction. There are NO springs to weaken over time. The throw is very positive and the throw bars are stainless steel. The three mounting options are a real plus. I highly recommend them. I haven’t had Andy’s problem yet, but, he has a good fix if necessary.

When these were introduced and featured on this Forum I believe, I thought they were a good addition/replacement for my Aristo switches. I saw them listed on Bachmann UK web page but now they seem to be out of stock. I wonder if they ever were introduced in the UK as I never saw any of my favourite dealers listing them.

Pity really!!