Which track system suits you?

1. Why this is the second most important question

You have decided how much space you have, and from that your scale — H0, TT, N or Z. The next question follows immediately: which track do I buy?

It feels smaller than the scale decision. It isn’t. It determines:

• which radii you can run at all — and therefore which locomotives will work on your layout,
• which stations you can build — not every system offers curved turnouts or double slips,
• how much work the trackwork is — with or without ballasting,
• and what the whole thing costs you — not just at first purchase, but with every turnout you ever add.

Switching later means selling your track (at a loss) and buying new. There is no gentle migration. That is why an hour of thought here pays off more than anywhere else.

2. The chain of decisions

Four questions, in this order. Each one narrows the field.

1. Two-rail or three-rail? (only relevant in H0) → §3
2. With or without ballast? → §4
3. Which system exactly? → §5
4. Which rail height? (code 100 / 83 / 75) → §6

Turn the order around and start with “which brand is best?” and you land in the endless forum debates. Back to front there is no answer — front to back, usually only two or three systems are left.

3. Two-rail or three-rail?

What is this about? With almost all manufacturers the current comes through the two rails (two-rail, DC). In H0, Märklin uses a third conductor in the middle of the track — formerly a centre rail, today a row of small contact studs (Punktkontakte, “Pukos”).

Why does it matter? This is the only decision in the chain that affects not just the track but the rolling stock as well. A three-rail locomotive will not run on two-rail track and vice versa. You are not choosing a track here, you are choosing an ecosystem.

What does it cost you? Decided wrongly, this is the most expensive mistake in the whole hobby: it is not only the track that hangs on it, but your entire collection of locomotives and coaches.

How do you decide?

• Three-rail (Märklin) if you have inherited or second-hand Märklin stock, if reversing loops without wiring effort matter to you, or if you are in the Märklin world anyway.
• Two-rail if you want to buy freely from every manufacturer, if track appearance without contact studs matters to you, or if you are planning outside H0 — in N, TT and Z the question effectively does not arise.

In our libraries: 52 two-rail systems, 6 three-rail. In H0 the three-rail systems are all Märklin/Trix Express; the sixth is Lionel FasTrack in O gauge.

4. With or without ballast?

What is this about? Ballasted track brings the track bed along as a plastic moulding — you click it together and it looks finished. Track without ballast is just rail and sleeper base; you add the underlay (cork) and the ballast yourself.

Why does it matter? It determines how your layout building goes — and how it looks.

What does it cost you? Two items work against each other here:

• Ballasted track has the higher unit price.
• Track without ballast needs cork underlay and ballast as a separate item — plus the working time.

In our libraries 49 of 63 systems are unballasted, 14 ballasted. If you choose an unballasted system, budget for the ballast from the start instead of noticing once the track is down.

How do you decide?

• Ballasted if you build up and take down on the carpet or a table, if the layout has to be rearranged, if children play with it, or if you want to run trains quickly rather than spend a long time crafting. Ballasted track is sturdier underfoot and more reliable in operation.
• Unballasted if the layout is built permanently and the result should look as real as possible.

A detail that often surfaces too late: flex track — the metre length you bend freely — barely exists in ballasted systems. If you want flowing alignments, you are better served without ballast. In our data several ballasted systems (Kato Unitrack, Piko A with ballast, Bachmann E-Z Track, Roco geoLine) have no flex track; Rocoline with ballast is one of the exceptions.

5. Which system exactly?

What is this about? Usually only a few systems are left now. They differ in four points, which are worth checking in this order.

5.1 Is the smallest radius enough for your locomotives?

The smallest production radius is the hard limit of your layout. It differs markedly between systems — in H0 between 295 mm and 457 mm, in N between 150 mm and 279 mm.

This is not a nicety: Kato Unitrack HO starts at 430 mm, Roco Line and Rocoline at 358 mm. If you are short of space, Kato simply gives you fewer options. Conversely Rocoline goes up to 1962 mm — a radius in which long express coaches also look right.

The curve radii in your system determine which vehicles you can run. See also: minimum radius (check rule), radius (glossary).

5.2 Does it have the turnouts your station needs?

Any system will do for a simple loop. As soon as you plan a real station you need more: curved turnouts for tight track spacing, three-way turnouts and the double slip. That is the most common argument in the forums against an otherwise good system.

From the data (H0, current systems): a double slip is offered by Märklin C, Märklin K, Piko A, Piko A with ballast, Roco geoLine, Roco Line, Rocoline with ballast, Tillig Elite and Peco Streamline (Code 100, Code 75 and Code 83) — the continental European systems plus Peco’s Streamline range. No double slip in Kato Unitrack HO, Bachmann E-Z Track, Hornby, Peco Setrack, Peco H0m and all Atlas systems.

5.3 How wide is the range?

More shapes means more freedom when planning. The spread is considerable: from 5 parts (Micro Engineering H0) to 68 parts (Kato Unitrack N).

Careful with the interpretation: a small range is not a knock-out criterion if the system has flex track — Peco Streamline carries no fixed curves at all, because everything there is bent from flex track. That is a different planning style, not a shortcoming.

5.4 What does a turnout really cost?

This is the item that blows up most calculations. In most systems the turnout motor is not included: the turnout comes in the box as a manual one, and the electric drive is a separate article you buy per turnout.

From our data across all 63 systems:

• 43 systems sell the drive separately — one extra article per electric turnout.
• 4 systems additionally offer their own built-in decoder for digital operation (Märklin C with drive 74491 + decoder 74462, Märklin K with 74490 + 74461, Roco geoLine with 61195 + 61196, LGB with 12010 + 55025).
• 2 systems have the drive integrated (Kato Unitrack).

Work this through on your own plan before you commit: a medium-sized station quickly has twelve turnouts — and therefore twelve drives, roughly €240 for Märklin C in drives alone. In some systems this block is larger than all the track put together.

Careful with the number of drives: “one turnout = one drive” is not always true. A three-way turnout needs two drives (Märklin C 24630, Piko A 55225 — both manufacturers say so explicitly), a double crossover up to four. Anyone calculating by turnout count undercounts exactly the most expensive components.

5.4a Digital is cheaper than most people calculate

This is where the reasoning error sits that makes digital operation look needlessly off-putting. People read “one decoder per turnout” and multiply. That is the more expensive of two valid routes:

One four-channel module switches four drives. The requirement is therefore a division with rounding up, not a multiplication: ceil(drives ÷ channels). At twelve drives, the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive route is a factor of 4.3.

What you trade for it: the module sits centrally under the layout, and a pair of wires runs to it from every drive. The built-in decoder saves exactly that wiring — a real argument for a small layout, rarely one for a station.

The decoder has to match the digital format, not the track manufacturer: three-rail layouts (Märklin) run Motorola/mfx, two-rail layouts run DCC. A Viessmann k83 is a Motorola module — right for Märklin, wrong for a DCC layout.

And analogue is not free either. If you throw your turnouts electrically but without a digital command station, you need a control panel. The same division applies here: all four common panels switch four drives, so the requirement is rounded up(drives ÷ 4).

That last column matters more than the price difference: a panel that expects end shutoff will not reliably switch a drive that has none. Three of the four manufacturers say so outright in their product description; Märklin says nothing about it, and that does not mean the panel works without end shutoff. Which type your drive is, is stated on the drive’s data sheet, not the panel’s.

The Trackplanner knows the drive model and the drive’s article number for every system. That is why drives appear as their own line in the parts list — you see the item before you order, not after. In the build plan the electrics appear as build stages (manual → electric → digital), each with its surcharge; the decoder requirement is calculated from the channel count, not from the turnout count.

5.5 Is the system still being made at all?

The point a price comparison hides most easily. A track system is not a one-off purchase: you buy more later. In two years you will be three curves short, a turnout will fail, the station will grow. A system that has been discontinued can then only be topped up second-hand or from remaining stock — at prices nobody can predict.

That is exactly why our tables carry the status next to every price:

Of the 63 systems recorded, 47 are current and 16 historic (including Märklin M, Fleischmann Profi, Trix Express, Piko Hobby, Shinohara); none is currently discontinued.

Does that make discontinued systems off limits? No. If a discontinued system happens to be cheap right now, it can be a good choice — for a layout with a fixed final state, for an exhibition board, for getting started on a small budget. But two things you need to know:

1. The low price is partly a clearance price, not a permanent property of the system. It says nothing about what the next component will cost you.
2. Buy what the final state needs right away. With a current system you can top up piece by piece; with a discontinued one, today’s stock is your stock.

Wherever this knowledge base names a system that is no longer in production as the cheapest one, the caveat stands right next to it — together with the price of the cheapest system still in production, so you can see what future-proofing costs you.

6. Rail height: code 100, 83 or 75?

What is this about? “Code” is the rail height in thousandths of an inch. Code 100 = 2.5 mm, code 83 ≈ 2.1 mm, code 75 ≈ 1.9 mm.

Why does it matter? Lower profiles look markedly more realistic. Higher ones are sturdier and more forgiving — both when laying track and with older vehicles whose deep flanges can bottom out on code 75.

How do you decide?

• Code 100 if you run older or second-hand vehicles, if reliability comes before looks, or if the track gets handled often.
• Code 83, today’s standard for newly built layouts — a good compromise.
• Code 75 and finer if you photograph your layout and run modern vehicles exclusively.

Within one brand, profiles can be joined with transition tracks — so you do not have to commit for the whole layout, but you do for the visible areas.

7. Can you mix systems?

Short answer: yes, with limits. In two-rail DC the manufacturers are standardised; electrically it fits together. Mechanically you need transition rail joiners, and with different rail heights or at a ballasted ↔ unballasted transition you have to compensate for the height difference.

What does not work: two-rail with three-rail.

The usual and sensible case is not “mix everything”, but: one main system, supplemented by individual parts from another — a turnout shape your system does not offer, for instance.

In the Trackplanner you can load several libraries into the same plan and try the combination out before you buy anything.

8. The comparison tables

The complete generated tables per scale are in our generated comparison dataset (produced from the track libraries).

Extract H0, current systems, by range width:

Extract N, current systems:

9. The same layout in every system

Comparing systems on individual unit prices is misleading. So the generator builds the same small but complete layout in every system — and counts what it takes:

Oval (two half circles + two straight sides)
+ passing siding (2 turnouts)
+ stabling siding (1 turnout)
= 3 turnouts, so 3 drives

All three are ordinary left/right turnouts, so “one turnout = one drive” really does hold here (with a three-way turnout it would be two, §5.4). In digital operation one single four-channel module is added — not three decoders: ceil(3 ÷ 4) = 1. For Märklin C that is €35.22 instead of €114.81.

The layout is a real plan, not a calculation

This is where this comparison differs from most. Adding up a parts list from target dimensions is easy — and can contain parts that never join into a closed layout. An oval only works out if the curve angles add up to 360°; a passing siding only if there is a curve that brings the turnout’s diverging route back parallel, and if the straights fill exactly the gap that creates.

That is why the layout is actually built and checked in every system: every joint has to be coincident (gap 0), the loop has to close, the siding has to meet both turnouts. What does not close does not appear here as a number. These six systems carry the layout — and you can look at each one as a public plan:

Cost = track, the three separately purchased point motors and the lever panel that switches them (one four-way panel covers three motors). That makes it the layout without digital control. It does not include the power supply — a transformer for analogue, a command station for digital; both scale with the layout, not with the track system. Digital decoders are not in there either (§5.4a). For each article we take the cheapest offer from our connected retailers — in-stock ones ahead of cheaper ones that are currently unavailable — calculated with the pack sizes the trade actually sells, rounded to whole euros, as of 3 October 2026; we fetch prices daily. For the panel, fitting the type of point motor comes first: where the manufacturer does not state that type, the pairing is plausible but not on record. Clicking the amount opens the plan with the full parts list. Where a price is missing a dash takes the place of the total — a partial sum would be misleading in a comparison. Where the amount is prefixed with from, something is missing that leaves only a lower bound — a pack size for one article, or a lever panel none of our retailers stocks in that buying region.

Every row is a real, publicly available plan — look at it, rotate it, rebuild it:

Tillig H0 Elite does not work out — and that is the more honest answer. With Elite turnouts (diverging at 15°, 12°, 9.4° or 6.34°) and only 30° curves, it is not obvious that the passing and stabling sidings can be closed without flex track — and the catalogue holds no counter-curve for the branch of an Elite turnout that would bring the passing siding back parallel. So the plan does not fail on a gap in our data but on the geometry of the system: Elite is a finescale system for scratch builders, where flex track is the normal case. If you want to plan from catalogue parts only, the geometric systems make it easier.

There is therefore no public plan for Tillig and no cost line — not in §8 either. An earlier version of this page carried €260.63 there; that figure came from a calculated parts list nobody had checked geometrically. This section is about precisely that, so it no longer stands.

Why the parts count varies so widely

The overview below still comes from the older, calculated method and therefore covers more systems. The verified plans above are what the cost statements rest on; this table shows the effect at issue:

For exactly the same layout, Atlas code 100 needs more than twice as many parts as Hornby. That comes down to the grid: 15° curves instead of 30°, shorter straights. Comparing only the unit price of a curve means comparing the wrong number — what matters is how many pieces the layout needs.

On top of that, almost every system needs three turnout drives. In digital operation one four-channel decoder module is enough for this layout (§5.4a) — three built-in decoders would be more than three times as expensive for Märklin C (€114.81 against €35.22). With Kato Unitrack the drive block disappears entirely, because the drive is part of the turnout’s price.

Five H0 systems do not appear in the table: Peco Streamline, Peco code 75, Peco code 83, Shinohara and Micro Engineering carry no production curves — there the oval is formed from flex track, and the parts count depends on the radius you choose. Atlas code 83 is missing because our library carries no simple left/right turnout for it (see the data gap in §10).

The complete parts lists with article numbers are in our generated comparison dataset.

What the layout costs (DACH)

Price date: 3 October 2026 · Source: Modellbahn Union · Currency: euro Two positions are older: we last retrieved the price of the Piko 55201 straight (€2.16, in Piko A) on 8 August 2026, and that of the Märklin 20299 set (€27.49, in Märklin C) on 25 September 2026. Prices change. The date is in the generated dataset (column “price date”) and is carried along on every retrieval — the figure here is an extract from it, not a hand-maintained year.

What is calculated is the actual purchase: for every position the matching listing is chosen and rounded up to whole packs. Where one pack covers several positions it is bought once and counted against all of them. At MU, track pieces are almost always single articles, so surplus is rare — the one exception follows directly below.

One Märklin C position is a pack, not a single item. The plan needs three counter-curves 24224. Modellbahn Union does not sell the curve individually but in the Märklin 20299 set (4 × 24224 + 2 × 24206, €27.49). The calculation therefore buys one set, so the total carries a fourth curve and two 24206 the plan does not need. That is not an imprecision but the purchase as it actually falls due — exactly what this table’s rounding up to whole packs is for. At the time of retrieval MU lists the set as “currently not available”; the price stands, the availability is a snapshot.

Both tables now price the same scope: the layout without digital control. That is new, and the difference was this page’s biggest shortcoming. Until 29 September 2026 a turnout decoder per turnout hung in the total here for Märklin C and Roco geoLine (€114.81 and €88.83 respectively, close to 30% each) and for the others it did not — two digital totals stood next to four analogue ones, and the most expensive build was the one being costed. The same calculation the app’s parts list already applies now settles it for both tables: track, point motors and the lever panel you switch them with in analogue operation. The decoder comes back in once we carry a priced module for every digital format — and then as a module per four point motors, not as a built-in decoder per turnout (§5.4a).

What remains is the arithmetic. §9 takes the cheapest offer per article across all connected retailers — with offers in stock taking precedence over cheaper ones that are currently unavailable — whereas this table stays with a single retailer. Both round up to whole packs where the pack size is on record; where it is not, §9 costs per unit and so states a lower bound, while this table would rather leave the total open altogether. And a pack that covers several positions can be bought once here and credited to all of them — although that does not currently occur in any of this data set’s purchases.

Which of the two ends up smaller is therefore not fixed. A market figure, then, not a shopping list.

These figures share the same scale, the same layout, the same region, the same currency, the same day (apart from the two positions above), the same retailer — and, since 29 September 2026, the same scope: track, three point motors, one lever panel. That makes them readable against one another without a caveat for the first time.

The order has turned at both ends as a result, and that is the point of the exercise. With the decoder, Roco geoLine was the second most expensive system; without it, it is the cheapest. Märklin C was the most expensive and now sits €1.55 below Piko A with ballast. If you have the old table in mind: the decoder carried that order, not the track.

What is not in the totals is left out symmetrically. Out stays the power supply — a transformer for analogue, a command station for digital. Both scale with the layout, not with the track system, and anyone running digital has the command station anyway. Three things get mixed up here easily: the lever panel switches (its measure is the channel count), the transformer supplies (its measure is VA), and how many feeder tracks a layout needs depends on voltage drop along the track. Only the first belongs in this table.

Two systems are missing, and for two different reasons. Tillig H0 Elite (code 83) could be costed on paper (€281.20), but it has no plan that has been checked as geometrically closed: there is no counter-curve in the catalogue that brings the branch of an Elite turnout back parallel (Elite is a flex-track system, §9). A figure next to a layout that does not actually go together is exactly the kind of statement this page tries to avoid. Märklin K fails a step earlier: none of our retailers carries its point motor (74490), and without the motor the layout cannot be costed in full — so there is no total there at all, not even a lower bound.

Other gauges stay out of this table too. Roco TT costs €192.34 for its version of the layout, but a TT layout is smaller (1713 × 774 mm instead of a good 2.2 × 0.9 m). Putting that number next to the H0 figures would make a gauge effect read as a price advantage of the system. Choosing between scales is a decision about space, not about the price of track. In the table in §9 its cost cell therefore reads “different gauge” instead of an amount.

All five are current systems — so here the cheapest is not the one being discontinued. If it were, the caveat from §5.5 would stand at this point.

Three things can be read from this that usually get lost in the forums:

Parts count and price do not run in parallel — they even run against each other. Peco Setrack needs the fewest parts at 31 and is still more expensive than Piko A with 35. Comparing systems by “how many parts do I need” gets it wrong; comparing them by the price of a single curve does too. Only the finished layout answers the question.

Ballast costs a premium — and we can now quantify it, but only halfway. Piko A and Piko A with ballast are the same layout at the same size; the ballasted variant costs €49.82 more (+20 %). That is the premium against bare track — with plain Piko A, underlay, ballast and adhesive still come on top. The underlay can be calculated (Noch cork, 3 m per pack, €16.63–20.79); for ballast (€11.70 / 500 g) and adhesive (€6.64–17.05) no manufacturer states a reach in metres of track. We therefore show these two items as “price known, quantity unknown” instead of inventing a number. The real gap between the two variants is thus smaller than €49.82 — but by how much exactly, the sources do not say.

The turnout block is large — but the track makes the difference. That shows best with Märklin C and Roco geoLine. With Märklin C the three turnouts cost €55.97 and their point motors €59.97, so with the lever panel €136.51 of turnouts and electrics: 46 % of the €295.20 total, and not a centimetre of track is included yet. With Roco geoLine, the cheapest of the five, it is €69.12 for the turnouts and €70.74 for the motors — with the panel €160.43, even €23.92 more. The €49.44 that separates the two systems therefore sit entirely in the track, not in the turnouts. Read the other way round: anyone planning more than three turnouts shifts the order of this table, and does so through the point motors, whose unit price ranges from €15.30 (Peco) to €28.12 (Piko).

If you run digital, the sum works out differently again, and the difference is large: for C track Märklin offers a built-in decoder per turnout (74462, €38.27 — €114.81 together), whereas a four-channel module for all three turnouts costs €35.22 (Viessmann k83, §5.4a). Both routes are valid; the second is the usual and cheaper one — a factor of 3.3. The module has to match the digital format, not the track manufacturer: for Märklin C the build plan therefore picks the Viessmann k83 rather than Märklin’s own m83 (60832, €62.99), which is almost twice the price and was out of stock at the time of retrieval. Neither is in the totals above: the table compares the layout without digital control, because otherwise we would be counting a decoder for some of the systems and not for the others.

A procurement note: since 25 September 2026 the plan uses the standard turnouts 24611/24612 (24.3°) instead of the curved 24711/24712 (12.1°). The reason is track spacing: the curved turnout puts the passing siding at 50 mm, which is very tight for H0 — the C track parallel spacing is 77.5 mm. Both are obtainable; at Modellbahn Union, though, the counter-curve 24224 comes only in the 20299 set (four pieces), and individual C track positions are listed there with “delivery time on request” rather than from stock.

What the layout costs (UK)

Price date: 3 October 2026 · Source: Harburn Hobbies · Currency: pound One position is older: we last retrieved the price of the Peco ST-204 long straight (£7.45) on 2 September 2026.

Why “from”: track and the three point motors are in there in full, the lever panel is not — none of our British retailers stocks one. The DACH total carries €20.57–21.59 for it, so something of that order is missing here. Estimating a figure for it would be guesswork, and leaving the item out silently would make the British layout look cheaper than the German one.

Caveat: as of 23 September 2026, Harburn no longer stocks the ST-204. So the layout cannot currently be bought complete there; the total counts this position at its last price.

The same layout is noticeably cheaper in the UK than in DACH — from £195.30 against €285.72 for exactly the same 31 parts (the British total is still missing the lever panel, see above). That is not an exchange-rate effect but a home market: Peco is a British manufacturer, and British dealers cost their own range differently from an importer. If you are planning in the UK, Peco deserves a more serious look than the DACH table suggests.

For the remaining Peco ranges (Streamline, code 75, N) individual articles are still missing at the dealer; they only get a total once every position is priced. Peco TT is fully priced there but has no verified plan, so it gets no total either.

10. What is still missing

Costs are available for DACH and the UK (§9): Modellbahn Union (583 priced articles together with the Märklinshop, five H0 systems plus Roco TT complete) and Harburn Hobbies (200 articles together with Scograil, one system apart from the lever panel). Still open:

1. Gaps in our own library data. While pricing, it became clear that several positions carry no real manufacturer article numbers at all:

• Rocoline with ballast and Roco Line: parts with the internal identifiers D4, D8, D12 instead of a Roco article number — not orderable and not priceable that way.
• Roco Line: combined numbers such as 40295/40296 (drive left/right) and 42616/617. Partly solved (2026-08-10): such numbers are now split into their parts when pricing, so the article is found under the individual number (42616/617 → 42616, found). That does not replace proper data maintenance, but it makes the pieces findable immediately. The split is deliberately cautious: 3900 D1/1 (Märklin) is left untouched, because the slash is part of the name there.
• Atlas H0 code 83: no simple left/right turnout in the library (10 parts in total).
• Piko N: a placeholder instead of an article number.

This is not a finding about the manufacturers but about our data — and work on our side. As long as it is open, the two Roco systems of all things are missing from the cost comparison.

2. Märklin C — done. The missing decoder was the old number 74461; the successor 74462 has been retrieved (€38.27), and the layout now uses the curved turnouts whose counter-curve the dealer stocks. Märklin C is therefore complete in §9.

2a. USA without a total — and that stays that way for now. The US source (modeltrainstuff) sells track largely in packs, and the piece count is only a convention in the product title. Calculating from that would mean guessing (errors by a factor of 4 to 8), so the shop is set to content_kind = unknown and deliberately returns no total. Solvable only with curated pack contents or a second US source that sells singly.

2b. UK coverage. Peco Setrack has a total, but Harburn no longer stocks the ST-204 long straight (§9). For Streamline, code 75 and N, three to five positions each are missing that Harburn does not stock; Peco TT is fully priced there (without a verified plan, §9). A second UK source (Rails of Sheffield) would probably close the gaps — but their products.json sits behind bot protection. Scograil, connected since late August, mainly carries continental track (Roco, Fleischmann, Kato) and does not close these gaps.

2c. Märklinshop: prices yes, total not yet. Since late August the Märklinshop has been connected as a second DACH source. There, Minitrix N code 60 Beton (concrete sleepers) is fully priced, and Minitrix and Märklin K are priced except for two positions each. We still show no total: the shop sells more than half of its track only in minimum quantities (usually ten pieces), and how many pieces an offer contains is not yet maintained for it (content_kind = unknown, the same situation as in the USA, point 2a). The costs in §9 therefore so the total stated in the DACH section still leaves the Märklinshop out — it stays with Modellbahn Union. The cost column in §9, by contrast, picks per article across all connected retailers and may well land on it; where its pack size is missing, that column costs per unit and is then a lower bound.

3. Ballast as a cost item. For unballasted systems, underlay, ballast and adhesive are still missing from the comparison — around 7 metres of track for the example layout. The roadbed_products table and the quantity calculation are in place, and nine articles are now maintained and priced. For the underlay the reach is documented (Noch cork, 3 m per pack); for ballast and adhesive no manufacturer states a reach in metres of track, so they remain without a quantity. Only then can the table in §9 be switched between “bare track” and “including ballast”. Until then: the figures compare ballasted track with bare track, not with fully ballasted track.

4. Turnouts with several drives — solved, the data maintenance is still running. A three-way turnout needs two drives, not one. Until 2026-08-10 the parts list counted turnouts instead of drives and therefore priced these parts too low; since 10 August 2026 it counts drives, and the decoder requirement is a division by channel count instead of a multiplication (§5.4a).

What remains open is the curation: across three-way turnouts, double slips and single slips our libraries hold 67 candidates; two are documented and entered so far (Märklin C 24630, Piko A 55225). All the others still count one drive. That is a decision, not an oversight: the research on Märklin C 24624 (double slip) produced contradictory information — several dealers write that the drive is already built in there, which would be a third situation not yet modelled. Setting a number you cannot document would be the same mistake as a guessed pack size.

For the tables in §9 this changes nothing: the example layout uses only ordinary left/right turnouts in every system. The correction takes effect on your own plans as soon as one contains a three-way turnout.

5. Digital operation for two-rail systems still has no total — but the reason has changed. The four-channel modules for Motorola/mfx are priced (m83, k83 — §5.4a). For DCC this section long said no priced module existed. That held only for the candidate examined at the time, the ESU SwitchPilot V2.0 (51820), which none of our sources stocks — the SwitchPilot 3 (51830), the same series one generation on, is very much on sale (€43.49, four channels, DCC and Motorola), and Modellbahn Union also sells an eight-channel module of its own for twin-coil drives (€29.99). Both have been curated since 28 September 2026, so the build plan does show an amount for the digital stage on two-rail systems — with one exception the next point explains: all three DCC modules are twin-coil modules, and seven of our systems run a motorised drive. There the stage stays without a figure because no fitting module is stocked, not because none is on record.

6. Drive type is recorded — but on only a few articles. Two things long counted as unknown here and neither is any more: the channel count of the control panels is in the manufacturers’ data (on record since 28 September 2026, §5.4a), and drive type has had a field of its own since 29 September 2026. That was needed because a decoder or panel does not suit every drive: a twin-coil module will not switch a motorised drive (the Tillig 86112, for one — and that is what seven of our systems use, Tillig Elite and Roco TT among them), and a panel that expects end shutoff will not switch a drive without it.

What remains is curation, and it is the normal case rather than the exception: of 15 drive articles, three so far carry a documented type. Where it is missing on either side we therefore exclude nothing — but we do not call the pairing verified either. In the cost column that means concretely: four of the five H0 systems get the cheapest panel that plausibly switches their drive (Roco 10521, which does not require end shutoff, €20.57); only Peco Setrack has a documented twin-coil drive and therefore gets the demonstrably fitting Märklin panel (72720, €21.59). Conversely, a documented “motorised” really does exclude: with Tillig Elite and Roco TT every twin-coil module drops out of the selection. Same rule as for ballast and adhesive (point 3): a named gap is better than an invented number — but no exclusion out of ignorance either.

7. The other regions. For the UK one total now exists (Peco Setrack, §9, with the caveat about the ST-204 and without a lever panel — none of our British retailers stocks one); the remaining systems stocked there are not yet priced throughout or, like Peco TT, have no verified plan. For the USA the pack content is not curated (§9): the piece counts differ per listing and appear only in the product title, so no layout has a total there. Both are data maintenance within the existing model, no longer an open design question.