Robert, that's fair, but then it fits in with the premise of the IS, i.e. old, useable junk!. I have no desire at all to hand lay any switches. These are really old; I picked them up at a show 20 yeas ago and they were old then! The one I chose cleaned up pretty nicely and was in gauge. I only have a very short amount of straight to fit this in and after trimming it, it is short enough. Not sure how I am going to throw the turnout yet though. Thinking of using an over-center spring. I have already isolated the frog, but still thinking of how to power it or if I even need to.
@Lemosteam - I was relating the evolution of my own turnout-making experiences, and the poor quality of these turnouts. Yup, of course they can be "fixed" and since there aren't any ties, other than a few (a verrry few) PCB ties, modding the turnout to fit your space is probably a pretty quick and easy solution since it's a #4.
I've done sorta the same thing for some friends except I used ME #6's to make "wyes" for their layouts...which wasn't all that difficult for me because at the time, I already had a couple of hundred hand-made turnouts under my belt.
Since the engines you'll be running on it will have short wheelbases, it would probably be a "good idea" to power the frog , and there are a myriad of ways to do it, the simplest way (probably...since I don't have any experience with them) would be to use a Frog Juicer, with the points being held in place by your aforementioned over-center spring...which isn't difficult to make.
I hope you DCC-friendly-ized the turnout, making the closure rails and point rails the same polarity as the adjacent stock rails...which is just a matter of how you gapped the PCB ties and the throwbar. DCC-friendly turnouts are also DC friendly.
As always, I really enjoy watching the progress you're making on your layout.
Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore