Okay gentlemen, I seemed to have “fixed” my “wide-radius” Aristo-craft stainless steel switch. Took ten minutes. I used my dremel on low-speed to deepen the flanges grooves in the frog and I used it also to carefully shave down the frog to the level of the tops of the rails…now my PA and PB go through this particular switch just fine. For now.
The bigger problem is that I didn’t really do my due diligence before ending up with about a dozen of these switches.
First of all, they ain’t “wide-radius”; they are 10-foot diameter, not 10-foot radius. MY BAD. I guess when Aristo says “wide radius” they mean it isn’t a four-foot 48" radius. Great. I was reading wide radius as meaning NOT a four- or five-foot radius, but a ten-foot radius like everyone else seems to talk about radius. I saw “wide radius” and “10 foot” and jumped to a conclusion that I didn’t appreciate until I had the switch in use and saw my PA and PB going several inches off the center of the track as it made it through the turn in a very bad-looking toy-like manner. In short, it looks stupid.
It wasn’t until Kevin asked which switches we were talking about, the wide-radius or the #6 switches, that the difference became fully apparent to me…and, secondly, the differences in the construction of the switches beca
I feel your pain, and sorry I cannot help. But can I offer a word of advice. Trackwork in hidden or hard to reach areas must be wider radius and equal or better quality than up front, because maintenance is usually harder in these areas. Learn from my mistake!
Your #6 is not made completely of SS, the frog is made of cheap cast pot metal with a weird plating.
The #6 has it’s own problems, and is actually harder to fix than the WR switches. Unless you are running all LGB, get the frog insert from Aristo or Train-Li.
I have extensive pages on both switches on my site under “Track & Switches”.
See the typical wear pattern cause by sloppy flangeway width and tight gauge:
I have been following this and what Greg said is quite correct, I have five original brass wide radius (aka ten foot diameter) that have been installed fourteen years; and I have four SS wide radius switches that have been installed for at least four years with very little problems after replacing the frogs.
Reciently I decided to run a aritso Heavy weight combine (4 axle) for the first time, and I had consistant problems on one SS switch. I checked the gauging of the heavyweight and found it narrow on the offending axle. I used Aristocraft’s gauge. After adjusting the axle to spec the problem was worse. I watched carefully as the car rolled through the frog and it did indeed climb the frog point. So I got my Dremel out and trimmed the frog down; but I noticed that balast dust had become lodged between the plastic frog and the short rail. The tapered point of the short rail stuck out and was catching the flange causing the wheel to climb out of the frog. I took dremel back out, and tapered off the point of the short rail similar to the shape of the original brass short rail. Greg has a good picture of that.
As Greg pointed out the switch gauge is narrow there. Since it is fairly close to being in gauge I may just dress the inside edge of the curved outside rail to get it back in tolerance as well.
The brass rails all seem to be in tolerance as far as the gauge is (of course the wing rail gap is wide)