I just installed 3 Aristo wide turnouts (10’ dia) and my 0-4-0’s don’t like them.
There seems to be two problems.
First problem is electrical… the engines tend to stall when they come to the frog. The frog is a lot longer than on the standard turnout and unless the loco has some speed, it may not be able to traverse the turnout.
Second problem is mechanical… when any of my 0-4-0’s, LGB, HLW and Aristo go across them the loco’s dance and jump around… not smooth at all.
My standard Aristo turnouts don’t give me either of these problems !!!
What is going on and what can I do to fix this?
Chuck
Hi Chuck,
I have one 10’ down at the moment and this gave trouble when new, my Connie derailed when entering from the throat of the switch. I found that when the switch was set for the turnout rather than the straight the switching rail was not making a good mechanical joint with the main rail, I simply bent the top part of the switch rail - gently - outwards to make a better joint. I have had no problems with it since. For the electrical side of it, the switch is live frog so it may well be worth running jumping wires from the side of the switch that is on the feed to the other side of the switch, the power will feed in from both sides then and will cut out any connection problems from the built in copper straps.
Hope you get 'em going mate.
Cheers,
Kim
[tup]