Piko 35281, G-scale rerailer/grade crossing with track

After building the first pieces of a street network on my G scale layout, I realized I may actually need to build a railway crossing. Luckily PIKO came up with a required track piece just this year, and I quickly bought one!

PIKO 35281 is a 320mm long brass track piece with a short road section wrapped around it. It comes in the same kind of a box as PIKO switches and other PIKO elements. The only unique part about the packaging is the sticker in the lower left part of the cover.

Inside we'll find the track and some accessories...

What we get is:

• 320mm long brass track piece with grade crossing
• a set of two American-style crossbucks
• a set of two German-style crossbucks
• a manual

It's obviously disappointing not to get Polish-style traffic signs but I can't say I really expected to get them :)

The manual shows some really obvious steps. Feels like PIKO really could have saved a tree or two here but on the other hand - it's nice that they tried...

This is what the crossing looks like from the top...

...and from the bottom. Interestingly the part looks like something really new at first sight. But as soon as we turn it around it becomes obvious that it's just a regular track piece with some plastic elements attached. Clever!

Let's see some more photos:


Looks nice to me!

The track is not just a grade crossing, it's also advertised as a rerailer. I was very curious to know whether the rerailing functionality actually worked...

The answer is: yes and no. It does work but not always. I rolled my derailed car over the track piece several times and got mixed results. I'd say it rerails in around 50% of cases and it's difficult to say what the influencing factor here is. So unfortunately it would be hard to rely on this product in terms of rerailing loose cars.