Do you need a special front sight or is the issue the fact that it is just cut closer to the muzzle.
Will any standard Novak front sight work?
BJT72 (the Colt rep on 1911forum.com) says the front sight is a Novak.
Go here: [b]Novak sight[/b] and go to post #7.
I haven’t seen one of the rail guns yet but I think it uses the same sights as the XSE model. The XSE uses a smaller dovetail and it is installed closer to the front of the slide than a standard Novak front sight.
Chuck Rogers posted some photos of a rail gun that he modified to use a Novak-style front sight here:
http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=306794&highlight=front+sight+dovetail
Novak is supposed to be making a sight to fit the XSE but I didn’t see anything on their website.
I was just going by what the Colt rep said. I have no experience with the Rail Gun and I haven’t checked my “Wiley Clapp” Commander to confirm if it is a true Novak. He said,
Colt’s cut is closer to the front than a standard Novak but the dovetail is the same.
Dang it! I was all set to order some sights.
I wonder why they would go through the hassle of doing their own cut? I had an XSW modified by Novaks years ago (including sights) and they didn’t mention the issue. I guess they just fit one and never brought it up.
Beats me. Colt has used that bastard XSE front sight on several of their pistols. The photos on Colt’s website look like the XSE front sight.
I’d give Novaks a call. If they make a sight to fit, it would br the easy way to go.
Colt and other 1911 makers have been doing their own cuts for years but the rep claims it is a Novak cut. However, Colt has a bad habit of changing things if they run out of parts during production. There may well be Rail Guns out there with Colt cuts or Novak cuts. I don’t know for sure but I do know they do some strange things even in the middle of a production run. Measuring would be the thing to do to confirm what you actually have.
I got to shoot one of these last weekend. Pappabear finally found one that looked like it was put together with a good overall fit and bought it.
The one he got is a nice shooting pistol.
That’s my best friend’s Rail Gun. He sent it to Chuck because he liked what Chuck did to my S80 Government so much. Oh, and it shoots! 
Now I think I want my Rail Gun “tuned up.” :sarcastic:
I called Novak’s. They said they had me covered either way. I am going to send it to them for a tritium front and a black rear.
Thanks for the update Greg. At lease now we know that Novaks has a sight to fit the XSE front dovetail.
IIRC, the sights on the Rail Gun are Novaks. I had a LW Commander with Champion sights that are Novak knock offs. I think Colt just switched to Novak entirely on the XSE line, I could be wrong.