It’s been a long wait since FX Bricks first teased their metal rails, but finally, the word is out: March 1st, 2021 will see the second coming of the 9V line! 15 years after the official introduction of Plastic Rails (and the demise of the good old 9V track) the one and only plug-and-play track system that TLC ever had is returning to the markets.
In fact, FX Bricks send us a pre-sale package of R72 and S32 rails last week so that we could already experience the look & feel of the product beforehand. In the seven days I had a blast playing with it, but also just staring at it, to be honest.
(p)review of FX Tracks
I’m not going to do a full in-depth review, because I think zephyr1943 over at Eurobricks did a very fine one already. I mean, if you read his piece, there is no need anymore to say anything else. Also, I mostly agree with the points he makes. And I also think that none of these points are big enough for me to actually make a fuzz about it. So, this review will be mostly an Unboxing Therapy. In fact, I’d say it’s more a Preview than a Review, but hopefully interesting to the community nonetheless!
First of all, the packaging. When I received it, I was immediately stunned with the high level of quality of it. In the past I did receive ME Models track (ziplock bag with a cardboard banner), Trixbricks (same) and Bricktracks (nice cardboard box, but with a sticker). This however is a totally different ballpark. The design is gorgeous, the packaging feels very high quality, and the rails are even held together individually with cardboard spacers.
Which, in fact, have different sizes to accomodate the tracks best as possible. Overall, it’s amazing work, and I can see these taking center spot in those good old Brick and Mortar stores.
The track itselfs looks and feels pretty high quality. The plastic is just a liiiiiitle bit more translucent then Legos, but from a little distance it’s almost invisible. Thanks to the metal rails the whole rail also feels a lot heavier and thus more high quality then a regular plastic rail. Also, the rails are clamped beautifully around the track. You can really see Michael and his team put a lot of effort into making sure this is engineered to the highest levels of quality.
A very nice addition is the embossing of the rail size on top of the rails. Both ME Models and Bricktracks also have this in their injection moulded rails, but they have it on the backside of the track. While this is already a great improvement of not having any identifiers, to me it’s pretty annoying to all the time turn around your track to see which radius it is. By embossing it on the top of the studs it really gives you the possiblity to see wich track you are holding with one short look. Which will definatly come in handy if they are really planning to expand to more diffent radii of curves. Also fun: the S32 straight track also has this embossing.
Regarding running 9V trains on FX track I didn’t see any difference at all (yeah the 9V motor is a bit old, have to admit that). I didn’t see any loss of power in this curve, the train just kept on running at regular speed all the time. It did lose a little bit of speed in the curves, but that’s normal due to the nature of curves to begin with. Mostly, I had way too much fun with the power controller, the haptic feedback of it (being an actuall thing instead of an app), and seeing an instant reaction of the train. Something that I haven’t experienced in ages, because of the annoying line-of-sight of the IR controller and the digital experience of a BT controller. In fact, not even the PUP controller (because of the push buttons) comes close to the good old speed regulator. Go 9V Go!
Pre-Conclusions & thoughts
I have to say that I’m pretty excited for this for several reasons. First of all, I was one of the people who invested (OK, fair enough, post-Kickstarter) in ME Models, hoping it would deliver on it’s promise to bring back 9V. It never happened unfortunately, and the products that they did manage to ship out, both plastic and metal rails, were sub-par to say the least. Thanks to Bricktracks this gap was finally plugged for plastic rails and wide radii were finally possible in a reliable and Lego-worthy manner.
And to be honest: I’m still very excited for the Bricktracks R104 switch, and I have two rounds of R104 and R120 laying around here. I think a lot of Trainheads who never grew up with the 12V or 9V system, and who have been using plastic track for all their Lego-lives, will be still very much interested in getting Bricktracks products.
However, for people like me, who grew up in the 9V-era (I’m not old enough that I had to go through that horrible period of 12V to 9V luckily), and who still have a decent amount of 9V motors, 9V track (mostly curves, obviously…) and about 10 power regulators laying around, the new FX Track really gives some interesting possibilities.
FX Bricks actually explains the three most important ones in the video, but for me one really, really sticks out and that is the plug-and-play part. To be fair again: I love the PF system, because I can decide on wheelbase length, motor power and everything else. However, the more shows I do, the more fed up I get of that annoying control and power system that both PUP and PF have. It’s so irritating to have a train going out of range, a dropping BT connection, a non-functioning IR remote, or even worse: Batteries dying on me. In fact, I’d say that 75% of the time I’m running trains at a show, I’m busy with the absolute horror of changing batteries, charging them, or trying to reconnect a BT controller, or even worse, trying to find out where I left my IR remote this time around. It just really destroys a lot of the fun of running trains. And yes, I know it’s cheaper. But it’s just not worth it anymore if you ask me.
So, long story short: Yes, I really look forward to this! And yes, I really want to thank FX Bricks for sending us this pre-sale package. I had a ton of fun and feel pretty special to have this product on my desk already a good 2-3 weeks before it actuall hits the shelves.
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