The wheels of my locos and rolling stock jump on the frogs of peco streamline N scale code 80 electrofrog turnouts when they enter the short area of the wing rail and this causes frequent derailments.
Does it depend on the poor quality of the wheels (Life Like and Bachmann locos, Rivarossi passenger and freight cars) or on the turnouts? How can I fix the problem? Thanks for any reply!
This is a common issue. The problem is the turnouts aren't NMRA standard but European standard. What does this mean to us, well the flange way is .040" for the fatter European flanges but NMRA standard is .030" for our thinner flanges so what this allows is as the wheels run through the extra lateral movement can allow the wheels to pick the point and derail. And as you may have noticed is it doesn't happen to the same piece all the time constantly, just usually randomly. You can test this but using a extra truck or even a piece of rollingstock and as it rolls through put lateral pressure and you will see it push over and want to pick the frog.
Now the fix is rather simple. You just need pick up some .010" styrene and glue it as a shim to the two flange-ways and trim down to level and you've now just fixed not just the derail issue but another issue of shorting as the engine comes out of the frog. I've done this to all my peco's on my little layout and have not had any issues. I've also done it to a friends large layout just before a show in November on the double mainline and we had zero derails at switches as well as zero shorts which was one big issue we had with steam engines on these turnouts.
Here's a pic I grabbed a while ago to help you visualize what I mean:
mavrick00, the way you explain things is exactly what's happening to me. In fact I took a spare truck and noticed the extra lateral movement you quote.
Thanks for the reply, the tip and the picture. Let me take the opportunity to say that model railroading IS fascinating but there's something it teaches for sure: patience!!!