Hornby point clips and two Y points

[Nictor]

New to Model Rail. Designing first layout and going down the DCC route. Couple of questions.

 

1) How effective are the Hornby point clips?

 

2) If I use them and then use 2 Y points to make a double slip, any problems likely to occur?

 

[DaveAus]

Have point clips in all my 13 points on my 9 x 4 layout and they seem to work just fine. Only have the single Y point and that is also fine with point clips.

[geochoice]

DaveAus said:

Have point clips in all my 13 points on my 9 x 4 layout and they seem to work just fine. Only have the single Y point and that is also fine with point clips.

I have 32 hornby points on my layout and 2 peco. All

good with clips and work perectly.

[2e0dtoeric]

To put the other side - I haven't used clips anywhere on my layout, but I do use a BUS system, so all bits of track are fed from that. In one area, I have about five sets of points 'chained', feeding sidings. Each set has a feed from the bus at the 'narrow

 

end', so even though they are the cheaper plastic frog, ones, everything works fine, even with 060's at slow speeds.

[Fishmanoz]

Droppers at the narrow end of points will certainly ensure volts are available everywhere, assuming you have good blade contact on the last point in your chain. However, plastic frogs are still dead and 0-6-0s and 0-4-0s working will still depend on all

 

of their pickups making contact to wheels and the point being flat, including the frog not being raised and causing wheels to lift off the track.

On any single point, point clips will achieve the same result as droppers, whether Y or otherwise, although

 

agree dropper and bus system is superior over an entire layout. Even so, many report here that their extensive layouts work fine with a single power connection and point clips. My 3 loop temporary layout works fine this way although it will have a bus system

 

when I make it permanent.

[The son of Triangman]

The point clips are fine and give little trouble when correctly fitted, they first came out in Zero One days and were re-introduced when Hornby introduced DCC into it's range. The "Bus" system is superior but I use the workshop test layout with just clips

 

and a single power clip and it works fine.

 

Make sure all pointwork is laid flat if using 0-6-0's and 0-4-0's as has been mentioned.

[DaveAus]

Had terrible trouble with my 0-6-0 till I 'adjusted' the contacts on the wheels ie bent them in a bit. Runs perfectly now over points it used to stall at all the time.