TheK4Kid,
Sorry about the finger. I wish you a speedy recovery. In my view, the epoxy route is a lot of work, might adversely affect some rolling stock, and is hard to remove. The plastic insert is quick, simple, and easy to modify or remove, and does not affect rolling stock. Both work. In any case, your call. Good Luck.
Thanks Dave, I tried using JB WELD epoxy.
Was going to work on cutting and grinding it to perfection today, but while plowing snow and trying to remove a rock that became wedged in my big TORO snow thrower, I managed to pinch the BY GOSSSHHH out of my left middle index fingerand it is black and blue all the way fro my fingertip to the first joint.HURTS like the BEDIKENS, so working with small tools is out for today!
TheK4 Kid
Trying pics again. Maybe this time.
Cut a wedge shaped piece of .010 inch thick plastic about 7/16 inch long and just wide enough to fit into the bottom of the track flange at the frog. A drop of glue on the underside will be enough to hold it in place. A dab of paint will conceal it perfectly. This procedure will eliminate the "Pot Hole" effect. It will not help derails caused by out of gauge wheelsets or uneven trackwork. A bit of fine tuning by adding thickness or filing more depth to match the flange depth of your rolling stock will provide a perfect running surface through the frog for either the tangent or the diverging route. It can be done in place with minimal effort and no damage to the turnout.
Another item to look at is correct alignment of rolling stock wheels in the right/left axis of the axle. Wheels may be in gauge but out of alignment with other wheels far enough to cause derailment at a frog or at the points. A coupler poorly aligned may also cause enough side force on wheels to derail a car.
Thanks Dave,
I tried filling the gap between the rails and the frog point with JB WELD. Letting it setup overnight and cure good. Will try the hacksaw blade method and see what happens.
TheK4Kid
JBB wrote:Kid: There's a lot of good advice in the posts here. Here's another factoid that you may take some comfort in: Linn Wescott wrote an article for MR years ago (I think '63 or '64) entitled "Can Derailments be Banished?" One of the things he said surprised him was that the Atlas #6 gave more trouble than the #4. One would expect just the opposite given the bigger radius, etc. of the #6. I know the tooling of the Atlas switches has changed since this article was written, but in the odd 40 plus years I've been fooling with the custom line switches, it has been my experience that the #6s are far more prone to causing problems than the #4s. So it's not just your imagination. Most be some kind of tolerence problem meets geometery. I'm not knocking Atlas products, or those who use them. I've got plenty myself, and most of them give good service. But I know how frustrating it can be when you run into a problem like this. If the various fixes suggested here don't work for you, I'd rip up the track and replace with something that operates to your satisfaction.JBB
Kid: There's a lot of good advice in the posts here. Here's another factoid that you may take some comfort in:
Linn Wescott wrote an article for MR years ago (I think '63 or '64) entitled "Can Derailments be Banished?" One of the things he said surprised him was that the Atlas #6 gave more trouble than the #4. One would expect just the opposite given the bigger radius, etc. of the #6. I know the tooling of the Atlas switches has changed since this article was written, but in the odd 40 plus years I've been fooling with the custom line switches, it has been my experience that the #6s are far more prone to causing problems than the #4s.
So it's not just your imagination. Most be some kind of tolerence problem meets geometery.
I'm not knocking Atlas products, or those who use them. I've got plenty myself, and most of them give good service. But I know how frustrating it can be when you run into a problem like this. If the various fixes suggested here don't work for you, I'd rip up the track and replace with something that operates to your satisfaction.
JBB
Thanks JBB
I apprecaite your reply as well as all of those who have chimed in here and offered different ideas.It is like the old saying, two heads are better than one, and three are better and so on.What I had done was put my two parallel mains in first, and got all my wiring, bus lines, feeders, etc done first, and had the turnouts in place, but no track running off of them, I left my sidings and yard to be done next.Everything was running fine around the mains after a few minor track adjustments.Then I started on my yard, and adding my yard lead, looking at possible placements of my Walthers 130 foot turntable.Started getting yard track layed, and had the lead in and run around track done first, then decided to try a few trains running through the turnouts.This is when I found the problem. There is and was a slight "bump" as the trains ran down the mainlines through the #6 turnouts, but the problem became much more pronounced when taking the diverging tracks.This is when I realized I had a frustrating problem. I have nine #6 turnouts in place at this time.So now I was hoping to find a reasonable solution, with ripping them out and replacing them as the last acceptable solution.But if this is what it takes, then this is what I will do.Of course it will slow down other progress on the layout, but then, life doesn't always proceed as planned or hoped for.
But I have learned a great deal from many on the forums here.
Thanks to all!
A standard hacksaw blade held in your hands produces near-perfect HO flangeways every time. I learned this building turnouts Jack Work style. Don't worry about filing accurate angles at the frog. Just get it approximately right and fill the whole thing with solder. Then carefully saw out the flangeways with the hacksaw blade. Saw the flangeways deep enough so no flanges bump up passing through. In my case, the solder served the same purpose as your JB Weld.
Fred W
jktrains wrote:Guys, the proposed solution of inserting a .010 piece of styrene is addressing the sympton and not fixing the problem. The better solution is to narrow the gap between the frog point and the closure rails and eliminate the so-called 'pothole'. How? Fill it in with a bit of metal repair epoxy. Fill it in completely and then recut the flangeway with either a hacksaw blade or, if you good and have steady hand, a dremel with a cut off disk. Having a flexible shaft on your dremel will allow you get the cut-off disk perpendicular to the railhead. Doing this extends the point of the frog and closes the gap into which the wheel is dropping.
jktrains,
Thanks for your time in answering.I actually debated the .010 strip idea, then got an idea in my head, what if I filled it in with JB WELD? So I am trying this on one turnout.I thought I can recut the flangeways very carefully by hand, and I have a set of very small hobby files, so I am waiting for the epoxy to setup.If I ruin the turnout, it is only one turnout and I have some spares.I'll see if this works and post my results on here later.
SELECTOR--the reference to the website is appreciated, I'll go check it out.Thanks again!PS-I do have a flexible shaft for my Dremel.
jktrains wrote:The better solution is to narrow the gap between the frog point and the closure rails and eliminate the so-called 'pothole'. How? Fill it in with a bit of metal repair epoxy. Fill it in completely and then recut the flangeway with either a hacksaw blade or, if your good and have steady hand, a dremel with a cut off disk. Having a flexible shaft on your dremel will allow you get the cut-off disk perpendicular to the railhead. Doing this extends the point of the frog and closes the gap into which the wheel is dropping.
That is exactly what I was thinking. Build it up with an epoxy and file/grind it to perfection!
Fellas, the problem with the turnouts we use is that they are very sharp for railroading. We use them because we have to, and the manufacturers of both the turnouts and the engines account for this. Unfortunately, due to poor tolerances so that derailments are minimized, the other big problem associated with the commercial turnouts, as Joe Fugate has pointed out repeatedly, is that the wing rails on either side of the frog do squat to get the wheel/driver tires across the gap...which they most certainly do on the properly gauged Fast Tracks and Central Valley kit turnouts...and on the prototype.
If you haven't already invested the few minutes of watching Tim Warrris' video at handlaidtrack.com, where he explains this very problem with commercial turnouts, do it soon so that you get a good, clear, and strong sense of the congenital defect in virtually every commercial turnout.
What theK4kid is seeing is his wheels being "let down" by the unfriendly wing rails on his turnouts.
rekleinThanks for the reply!I'll give this a try.
K4, I think you just lay a tiny sliver of .010 in the flangeway to raise it so the wheels ride on the flanges as they go thru the turnout. I have Atlas #6s on my layout and was having trouble with locos stalling on some frogs and not others. I checked with a straight edge and sure enough the frog was higher than the surrounding rail. After a little work with the file, most of the problem was cured,even my 0-6-0 swtchers will run thru the frog without stalling.Agood tool for checking turnout probles is a flat car made of clear plexi so that you can watch the trucks go thru the turnouts and see what is happening.Wonder if a guy could video that and slow it down for a little better observation.
BTW the high frog idea came to me from this thread.
daveinga,
If you're still out there, I'd like to see some pictures of how you corrected the problem with styrene strips if you could post some pictures please.Anyone else have this problem and find a solution besides ripping out the offending turnouts andrepairing them in place?
Thanks,
daveinga wrote:I got rid of the "pothole" by glueing short strips of .010 thick plastic to the bottom of the frog gap. Just enough thickness to support the flange across the gap. No more bump. No derails. Adjust the thickness to accommodate the flange depth of your rolling stock - no more, no less. A lot cheaper than a new turnout. Not a lot of work either.
Hi daveinga, Could you possibly post a picture of what you did? I am trying to envision how you did this ".010 styrene fix"
I would like to not have to rip my switches out if there is a decent solution.
I'm looking at an older Walthers HO catalog ( 2004) and also looked on walthers website.Which Peco would be a replacement for an Atlas code 100 #6 Customline turnout?
Walthers #6 is slightly shorter in length(Atlas #6 Customline is 12 inches) but should work. I can definetly see the difference in the "gap" between the rails and the frog, much less on Peco and Walthers.Makes me wonder why Atlas doesn't correct this problem???
My wheels and trucks on my engines are in gauge, they just don't like that "pothole" in these #6 switches.I have a smaller IHC 4-4-0 that isn't as sensitive, but it too also hits the pothole.It will take the divergent route without derailing, but the longer wheel base BLI's won't.I was adding up the switches I'll need to replace with Peco's or Walthers and I will need 9 of them.Going straight thru on the mainline the BLI's just "bump" a little but don't derail, but taking the divergent route, even very slow, they derail.I just don't want to keep putting up with the frustration, so if it costs more.... well it costs more!
Having BLI's derailing or laying over on their side isn't a happy situatuion either, they costs enough in the first place!I don't need to be repairing or repainting them.
wctransfer wrote: Well, If its giving you operating troubles (which it looks like it is) than I can see why you'd be upset, but real frogs and switches in yards arent perfect either. I have a diamond on my layout and its rough, just like the real things. You can clearly see the wheels go down and up when going over the diamond, and I have had no derailments when doing the correct speed limit (which isnt real slow, but prototypical). A little bounce isnt a bad thing, unless its causes trouble and derailments.Alec
Well, If its giving you operating troubles (which it looks like it is) than I can see why you'd be upset, but real frogs and switches in yards arent perfect either. I have a diamond on my layout and its rough, just like the real things. You can clearly see the wheels go down and up when going over the diamond, and I have had no derailments when doing the correct speed limit (which isnt real slow, but prototypical). A little bounce isnt a bad thing, unless its causes trouble and derailments.
Alec
Very true, and like you said, real railroad cars bounce going through turnouts too. Ride a passenger train and you will experience it first hand! So its not all bad. Atlas just have bigger speed bumps than others.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
wctransfer wrote:Well, If its giving you operating troubles (which it looks like it is) than I can see why you'd be upset, but real frogs and switches in yards arent perfect either. I have a diamond on my layout and its rough, just like the real things. You can clearly see the wheels go down and up when going over the diamond, and I have had no derailments when doing the correct speed limit (which isnt real slow, but prototypical). A little bounce isnt a bad thing, unless its causes trouble and derailments.Alec
Derailments are a problem, almost constantly if diverging onto the yard lead, but going straight through down the mainline, I only occasionally have a derailment.