Hello. I just joined the forum. At Christmas 1954, my brothers and I were given a Lionel train set. I still have it in the original boxes. Three years ago, I moved to the UK and through Tennents Trains here in England, I was able to put together a controller that operates on the 240v 50 Hz power that is in use here. The train hasn't been run in years but still works fine. I intend to pass it on to my son. I started to create a layout and have a question that is probably very basic but I don't want to bend anything so I'll ask the experts.
I want to change the direction of the curves so as to have both CW and CCW changes of direction. I've got a pretty good selection of track, some older and some newer. I seem to remember at one time there were some pieces of the track that had pins I could take out and put in the other end of the curve but now I can't find those pieces and when I tried that with the track I have now, I couldn't get the pins to budge and I didn't want to try too hard if the pins aren't supposed to come out.
Welcome to the forum and Merry Christmas!
If you wish to build a layout where you can reverse the direction of your train, then you need additional track and some switches. The easiest type of layout to do this is a modified Figure 8 layout such as this one.
https://www.scarm.info/layouts/track_plans.php?ltp=107I had a similar layout to reverse my trains.
All pins are made to come out. You may need to use a pair of pliers as a lever to get the stubborn pins to come out of the track.
Larry