Aristo’s track holds up as well outdoors as LGB. Personally I prefer Aristo’s stainless for the garden. My indoor layout would be stainless too except I’ve had the track for years…long before Aristo came out with their stainless.
Love that nice shade of battleship grey that Aristo ties get after a little while in the sun.
You can keep thier switches too.
Stainless rail wears out wheels too quickly for my taste.
I prefer PECO track , but the LGB track that comes with the boxed LGB sets --which are good value , by the way – I use in sidings where the track is half buried , no point in wasting it , it lasts forever . The sharper radii make good industrial sidings .
Historically , LGB advertised their track in the first instance with a set of their track crossing a driveway to a house , with an elephant standing on it .
I suppose they were aiming at the export market with that , but it certainly made people look .
All the elephant jokes were done to death at the time , and damn me , I can’t remember one of them .
Good track , definitely fit for purpose , and above all , wheel friendly .
Mike
John Joseph Sauer said:JJ
Love that nice shade of battleship grey that Aristo ties get after a little while in the sun. You can keep thier switches too. Stainless rail wears out wheels too quickly for my taste.
It’s all the same to me since I use neither for my RhB layout.
The track I use is a mix of Code215 - Australian drawn brass und USA drawn Nickelsilver. And I fully intend to change all the wheels to steel. Since my min. radius (on an industrial spur) is 1100mm (that’s almost R3) I don’t worry about excessive wear! But I won’t be using a LGB track-cleaning engine, either. 
A lot of my track is code 332 Aluminium. The rest is brass. Alot of the old LGB 1600 series switches are starting to get “Long of tooth”, and are slowly being replace with Aristo wide radius and #6’s, as I upgrade parts of the pike.I have never let the colour of the rail bother me, and the only time I would worry about the ties is if they gave up the ghost.
A lot of the ties I’ve been using are from Railcraft; which some people had trouble with; so they tell me. I find they are just fine for my use.
Bear in mind that I’m not out in the Arizona sun, and I do balast my track, so the ties don’t really stand out that much. I’m also not ito the idea of taking pictures that much.
The main thing around here is OPERATION, which demands good trackage, and roadbed. We want to operate and not be forever doing maintenence.
Using R/C battery solves a lot of the problems, and having good solid PC wooden roadbed solves the rest for me.
As far as switches…yes the Aristo ones do have a few guage problems, and yes I wish they would stop farting around and fix them…but in the mean time; I check my wheel gauge, on all wheel sets, and do a small bit of modification on the switches. The Aristo price is much better than the LGB ones, and I don’t want the bloody electric switch machine, that comes with every LGB switch.
All my swithes are hand throws, as the real NG pikes were, and if I have to I use choke cables to access out of reach switches.
We walk around with our trains, when operating, and throw the switches by hand.
I favour code 332, as it stands up to the punishment of the real world, where we sometimes end up walking on the track in desperation, to access some weed patch that needs trimming. With the solid wood roadbed, and the 332 rail; it stands up to the test. With good ballasting, and the slow oxidising of the brass and aluminium, the colour of the rail soon is lost in the scene.
Yes; if all you want is to take pictures and post them for prize money, or have books published extoling the virtues of your beautiful looking pike....go for the smaller rail...by all means. BUT if you just want good track to stand up while you enjoy operating .....stick with the good old 332.....it is less expensive in the long run, on top of it all.Some of the track has been in the outdoor environment for 10 years. The LGB 332 doesn’t seem to change, some of the Aristo 332 has started having broken tie ends, no real problems or guage loss. I’ll stick with the 332 rail, it holds up to our ops and it may not have to survive elephants around here, but some of it does have to survive grandkids using it as a balance beam and the lawnmower crossing it in a couple of places.
“Love that nice shade of battleship grey that Aristo ties get after a little while in the sun.
You can keep thier switches too.
Stainless rail wears out wheels too quickly for my taste.”
If certain things happen, you may want to get used to that…
“If certain things happen, you may want to get used to that…”
All coins have two sides.
Just hope it’s not a mis-strike and they’re both the same…
That would be a rarity.
John Joseph Sauer said:JJ
That would be a rarity.
Two blank sides make a perfect blank. 