track screws

[cteno4]

if anyone likes to screw down their unitrak or finetrack here are the best screw fasteners for this i have found out there:

 

http://www.trainaidsa.com/shop-fasteners.shtml

 

really great prices and these are fantastic little fasteners. varying lengths to your needs to boot and reasonable shipping. they are #00 screws and straight thread so they self start well with a small punch hole start or fine drill if you want it to drive super easy. i use them on my unitrak on the ttrak modules and just push on screw some to get it started into birch ply. just need to make sure you use a really good #00 philips head screwdriver or you can strip these easily. they even sell a good driver for $3. i have gotten a couple of other small #0 and #00 brass screws, but they were horribly expensive and striped if you looked at them!

 

they also have a few other useful items like very thin and flexible wire for dcc installs and a bunch of interesting surface mount led units that can run off 12v and be broken up into lengths you need. interesting stuff.

 

no connection with trainaids except a satisfied customer and like the fact this guy is making very targeting stuff thats useful and hard to get anywhere else and a nice guy to boot.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

Anyone else sell track screws?  After a month TrainAidsA has let me down and failed to deliver.  Organising a refund.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

This is terribly surprising as Adarsh is always so good.. I have coffee with him every month or two and would be happy to inquire for you. He is big on cutover service. Is it he is out of stock?

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[The_Ghan]

Jeff,

 

I don't want to run the guy down but this has been going on for over a month.  I'd welcome you mentioning it to him.

 

Briefly, I ordered a month ago and paid on the day.  After two weeks of nothing I contacted TrainAidsa, who claimed they didn't receive my order from PayPal.  I sent him proof of payment.  He claimed to have sent the order.  After another two weeks I contacted him again.  His claim was that he doesn't control the postal service.  I said that if I hadn't received them by the 28th October then I'd lodge a dispute (it has to be done within 6 weeks of order) with Paypal.  He had refunded my money within the hour.  Pretty strange considering Paypal would have covered the lost mail .... which is where I thought this was heading.

 

Your thoughts?

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[The_Ghan]

I hereby formally apologise to Adarsh from Trainaidsa.  www.trainaidsa.com

 

Adarsh posted my track screws exactly as ordered and they are postmarked on the date he said they were posted.  They just took a looooooong time to get to me.  I have to blame the US postal service (since my deliveries from China, Japan and UK are taking around 4-5 days) ... or perhaps the Australian Customs thought it was a drug concealment (after all, who would buy screws from the US and ship them halfway around the world?

 

Adarsh, I'm truely sorry for being so blunt and impatient.

 

I hope to do business with you again in future.

 

Kind regards

 

The_Ghan.

[David]

I hereby formally apologise to Adarsh from Trainaidsa.  www.trainaidsa.com

 

Adarsh posted my track screws exactly as ordered and they are postmarked on the date he said they were posted.  They just took a looooooong time to get to me.  I have to blame the US postal service (since my deliveries from China, Japan and UK are taking around 4-5 days) ... or perhaps the Australian Customs thought it was a drug concealment (after all, who would buy screws from the US and ship them halfway around the world?

 

Adarsh, I'm truely sorry for being so blunt and impatient.

 

I hope to do business with you again in future.

 

Kind regards

 

The_Ghan.

 

As a Canadian living 2 hours from the US border, and about 8 and half hours total driving time to MB Klein in Maryland, I can confirm the US postal service is always unusually slow - with packages ordered on the same day, using express shipping in both cases, those from Japan always arrive first.

[cteno4]

Ghan,

 

very glad to see the order showed up. i have had very variable shipping times for air mail from the states to australia and even canada. global priority is better, but gets really expensive and prohibitive for small items like this. SAL seems to be the only consistent cheap international shipping i have seen. everything else i have sent or ordered from other countries seem to be highly variable when using the cheaper shipping methods unfortunately.

 

enjoy the screws! make sure to use a good #00 screw driver for the screws and keep even constant pressure on the driver will turning. you are putting a lot of force on a tiny amount of surface area on the screw head there. since they are sharp and self starting you tend to will try to drive them w/o a starting hole, which you can do, but you just need to be careful when you do this. i strip maybe 1 in 20 going into luan ply w/o a starter hole. not sure if its just every so often its a slightly bad screw or i just let off a bit when driving it. i just use the needle nose pliers to back out the stripped screw.

 

glad it all worked out, ardesh has been really good in all my dealings with him and a nice guy to have coffee with and chat train odds and tends with now and then. when i first found his screws and realized he lived only a couple of miles a way from me i asked if i could just pick them up and he offered to meet to get them to me to save the shipping so i bought him a latte to pay for his time (still half the cost of shipping!) and we have had great coffee chats ever since.

 

jeff

[The_Ghan]

I'll be re-purchasing tonight - with a "no-ship" instruction.  I feel so bad that he refunded my money so quickly.

 

Cheers

 

The_Ghan

[cteno4]

I think his CS is to be pro-active on things like this. its nice to hear everything worked out well in the end except for the black hole in the mail system somewhere!

 

cheers

 

jeff