 Joined: 21/02/2016(UTC) Posts: 219 Location: Just north of London
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A while ago I thought that I am going to have a lot of free time on my hands so I was looking for ways to keep myself busy. I knew that there is no chance of building a layout (the boss won’t donate the spare bedroom) so the solution was a rolling road that will help with the locomotives maintenance. I didn’t like the idea of paying over £200 for the Marklin unit or £150 for the competition, a Google search yielded the following unit on ‘Ali Express’. It is an 8 rollers unit that is primarily designed for DC engines, however by wiring the two, left and right rails together (-) and adding a wire (+) to the centre rail the unit will run as a 3 rails unit. The quality is not the same as Marklin and the construction is simpler but sturdy. The slight inconvenience is that the roller blocks can’t be fastened in place so if the model is removed there might be a need to re-position the roller blocks, a small inconvenient for a unit that costs only £32.     
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 7 users liked this useful post by HO Collector
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 Joined: 26/07/2021(UTC) Posts: 635 Location: Sydney
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If you want to keep the rollers in position but still be able to easily move them. Glue a neodymium magnet in a hole in the plastic brackets.
The magnets will stick to a Toledo stainless ruler. Use that as a base plate. You can massage the magnets along the ruler for correct spacing.
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Joined: 23/05/2021(UTC) Posts: 252 Location: England, Guildford
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Somebody at the Bedfordshire Stamtisch last October had a very different type of rolling road - no rollers but two endless spring cords running in grooves driven by the loco driven wheels but the cord also drove all the unpowered wheels. There was some device which kept the loco on the table.
Wish I had taken more notice of it - where do you get such a thing?
ChrisG
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Joined: 23/07/2014(UTC) Posts: 8,467 Location: ENGLAND, Didcot
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Originally Posted by: Mman  Somebody at the Bedfordshire Stamtisch last October had a very different type of rolling road - no rollers but two endless spring cords running in grooves driven by the loco driven wheels but the cord also drove all the unpowered wheels. There was some device which kept the loco on the table.
Wish I had taken more notice of it - where do you get such a thing?
ChrisG That was me. The device is a Fleischmann/Roco Smartrail. Not many of these were sold as far as I can work out, as its retail price was far too expensive for what you got. I got mine from an auction for about a third of its retail price. It contains a Roco z21 controller which autodetects the loco on the unit, to find its address, and while primarily a DCC controller it will detect and drive an MM type decoder. I was running it with the Fleischmann loco that came with it.
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Joined: 23/05/2021(UTC) Posts: 252 Location: England, Guildford
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Thank you Alan, I see that it is no longer made. In the ‘good old days’ stuff stayed in the catalogue for years - now blink and you’ve missed it.
ChrisG
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