NelsonRain Train 13,500 Square Feet Cast Iron Outdoor Lawn Traveling Water Sprinkler for Yard, and Garden, with Auto Shut Off, Yellow

The Raintrain sprinkler can be purchased with confidence. It works as advertised. I've got a 17,000 sq ft yard which someday will be a good candidate for an inground sprinkler system. But until that day, the Traveling Sprinkler is a good workaround. I was always having to go back outside every hour or so to move the oscillating sprinkler, now the little yellow tractor does the job by itself. I still use an oscillating sprinkler for back corners and small spots, while letting the Tractor Sprinkler handle the big open areas.I use and recommend 5/8" hose. You're going to be running a hundred, maybe 200 feet of hose when you use this sprinkler, so water pressure loss will be a factor with 1/2" hose.With experience you will learn the best courses to run this sprinkler in your yard. As you know, you lay down the hose in the course you want the sprinkler to take, and the front grooved wheel rides on the hose and guides the sprinkler along. The manual says make your hose turns very wide and gradual, and this is important. The tractor will have trouble following sharp hose turns if they have a radius less than about 3 feet.Another thing to remember is that the tractor sprinkler drags the hose behind it as it moves along. Early in the course, there will be just a small loop, but as the course runs along, the dragged hose loop gets longer and heavier. This can give the tractor a problem handling turns late in the hose's course -- at this point the mass of the water filled hose being dragged behind, can overcome the steering authority of the nose wheel, making the tractor jump off course.This may not be a problem for smaller yards if you're not running more than 50 feet or so of hose. At 200 feet of hose, it's an issue. To avoid this, either keep the programmed run fairly straight... or put the biggest turns in the course early on in the run, where there won't be so much heavy hose being dragged behind. Or you could take a tip from the big tractor guys and add a little more weight to the nose, which would keep the wheel pressed down better on the hose. I haven't yet tried this myself, as the little tractor is already pretty at about 25 pounds.Where you want the tractor sprinkler to stop, place that little yellow plastic stop bumper over the hose at that point. The Tractor nose wheel runs over it, then the top of the stop bumper hits a kill switch on the belly of the tractor, and she halts. This is a great feature which lets you start the thing and then go out for a while, or even go to bed for the night... and the tractor will be stopped there waiting for you when you get back.You can fine tune the spray pattern from the rotor head. Point the spray heads up for high spray, or level for spray directed more horizontally. I like the horizontal pattern -- here in TX we get some wiiinnnndy days, and with this low horizontal pattern, the sprinkler shoots the water efficiently onto the yard without throwing a lot of it up into the wind where it gets lost to evaporation.Vary the hose pressure and you can go from a coverage width of about 15 feet up to nearly 50 feet. There are two drive speed settings. I've always used the slow setting. This tractor lays down a LOT of water into the ground at the slow speed. If you've had trouble keeping your turf sufficiently hydrated, this is the answer.This Tractor Sprinkler is meant for established lawns. Newly seeded turf can be chewed up too much by the lugged drive wheels, and the dragged hose. Nelson recommends an oscillating sprinkler for newly seeded lawns.Can't think of much else to say about it just now. If I do, I'll come back and edit :). Bottom line, I give it a good recommend. Any questions, email me at [email protected].

We bought two and wish we bought these sprinklers years ago. We used two new hoses (150 feet total) for our front yard and two old hoses (200 feet total) in the back, and quickly figured out that the Nelson RainTrain travels best on new hoses, perhaps because they are slicker, so we purchased two new hoses for our backyard too. Anyhow, we think it really runs best not using more than 150 feet of hose because of the weight it has to pull, and you can help it along about halfway, if you are using a lot of hose, by pulling up the hose to where the RainTrain is at. Turns really need to be very gradual, we found that out the hard way. It goes over the junction where two hoses meet just fine, in case you were wondering.It moves very slow and uses a lot of water. I thought I read somewhere it was a water conservation device, but I was wrong. My water usage did go up a lot. But we were using it daily because we just planted huge expensive trees that needed daily watering because we had feel like temps in the triple digits. I think when using this for regular watering, one would only need to water twice a week at most, because it waters so heavy, which is better for your lawn.We turned the nozzles downward and no longer have to worry about a sprinkler hitting our windows, and it still covers a lot of land, which is so cool. If you have acres, the nozzles pointed upward sprays water crazy far. The time it takes to water our yard is doubled, because of its speed, but our yard is watered well. We have binoculars on stand by to look out our windows to make sure it is moving. It is so funny how slow it goes, but it's doing its job. Our grass gets quite high before we mow, and the RainTrain still manages to travel through it quite well.Do not use on grass seed you just put down. You will need to wait until the seed has sprouted and is firmly sprouting in the soil. Also, it is not recommended for use on bare dirt. It can get stuck there. It has taken us a few times to get the hang of it, and to figure out the best path for it. Remember do not ever push it along, pick it up so you don't ruin the gears. If it gets stuck, get to it as soon as possible, to protect the gears. We do not recommend using it and leaving your house or going to bed. You want to be able to check on it now and then, to make sure it is not hung up somewhere. Now, I know there's a lot of do's and don'ts, but don't let that sway you. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a piece of cake.The RainTrain has made watering the yard fun. We used to have to take multiple trips outside to change our sprinklers, usually as a team, my husband would do the front and I would do the back, every 15 minutes when the kitchen timer goes off. Now we just look out the windows periodically to check to make sure it is trudging along. The only time we have to move it is in the front yard to do grass on the other side of the driveway. You do not EVER want this to go over cement. That will hurt the gears. Anyhow, this has saved us so much time in our lives. And it is way cheaper than installing a sprinkler system, which we cannot afford. The first day we had them running, we sat back on our deck, drinking cool drinks, while we watched it go ever so slowly. We were cracking up. This is the neatest thing.