Currently I am running 4 atlas 546 and 457 turnouts. I am having a problem at the frog with some of my locomotives where it looks like the flange on the wheel is riding up on the plastic filler in the frog. The question I have is are the frogs completly plastic or are they plastic coated metal? If they are truly just plastic then no problem shave that filler down with either a fine saw or a file and be good, however if they are plastic coated metal well obviously that will not work as I would end up creating a short going to the divergent track. Unfortunately the way my layout is setup if I cannot shave it down thewn I have to scrap the entire layout and design something different
It’s a known problem with some Atlas turnouts. We call these snap switches and it is not possible to electrify the frog so if there is metal, it would be deeper than you need to go.
I would use a jewelers file over a saw. Cheap ones from Harbor Freight are good enough and useful for a variety of MR building and track work. There are no drop in replacements for snap switches except other snap switches, because of their geometry.
I have even deepened Atlas number 4 insulae frog switches. I used a hand held hacksaw blade.
While waiting for a moderator to approve my post (how long does that go on) I ended up biting the bullit and took a hacksaw blade to the switch at the frog and at the guard rail and that did resolve the issue. They do appear to be completely plastic. On the Atlas custom line switches are those any better? I am looking at the #8 switches or would I be better off going with a different switch (peco, shinohara, etc)
Hi wolf10851,
The Atlas Customline turnouts have metal frogs. You asked “are they any better?”. I think that depends on what you mean by ‘better’. If you want to be able to power your frogs then they are obviously better because the frogs are metal. However, your problem seems to be related more to flange depth so I believe that you would have to use Code 100 Customline track and switches to solve your problem without having to change all your wheel sets.
My old club has installed about 100 Atlas Customline Code 83 turnouts on their new layout. In many cases the frogs were slightly higher than the surrounding rails so we had to file the frogs down a bit so they were at the same height as the rails. The only time we had a problem with the grooves not being deep enough was when we were running old rolling stock with so called “pizza cutter” flanges. Fixing that problem on freight cars and passenger cars was easy. We just swapped the wheel sets for InterMountain RP25 metal wheel sets. Old locomotives with large wheel flanges require more elaborate solutions which I will not attempt to address here.
Code 100 track apparently will accomodate ‘pizza cutter’ flanges, so switching everything to that will probably solve your issues.
Dave
Everything else is code 83 on my layout. Are you saying that I should switch all my track to code 100 or just the switches then use a code 83 to code 100 joiner? Would I be better off going to Peco at double the price or to Shinohara at 1.5 times the price ir should I be ok with the atlas which are the cheapest so far that I have found
Hi Wolf,
You said that you were able to solve the problem by using a hacksaw blade to increase the depth of the track spaces between the turnout rails. Why not just continue to do that? You clearly are attached to those locomotives that are experiencing problems so I would suggest using a solution that allows those locomotives to run.
Dave
Well right now I am using the 22" Snap turnouts. Another problem has occurred. When I run the 2 ES44AC consisted then they are pulling each other off the track. First they werre rising above the frog which the hacksaw took care of that issue but now with the consist issue I need to completely tear apart my layout and start from scratch since my old layout was reliant on those switches to go from mainline to divergent. I have a new layout in mind and it should work well with the #8 switches but before I buy them I just want to make sure that I am not buying another headache
If there is such a thing as a consensus on this forum, I would say that Atlas turnouts have a good rep. The snap switches, in addition to plastic frogs, have curved departure rails. The higher end Atlas turnouts have more prototypical straight departure rails.
A #8 turnout takes up a lot of space and has a very long frog, you may need to power. I don’t see those in the current Atlas listings.
Peco have the shortest over all length and some people like their spring loaded points, which allow you to flick the points with you finger, rather than have a manual or motor device to move the points. Other people like their turnout motors. They are pricey.
Shinorhara has gone out of business. Walther has found a replacement for their line of track, but they don’t have a full catalog yet.
Every, and I mean EVERY problem I had with a particular car or loco bumping through Atlas Custom Line Code 83 ended up being the wheels on the car or loco in question, when checked with an NMRA gauge.
Even old Rivarossi with pizza cutter wheels - they sort of made a buzzing sound running on code 83 because the flanges hit the spike detail on the track, but they stayed on the rails. Too annoying for me to want to run them much, but no problems with any more modern stuff with RP25 wheels.
–Randy
The Atlas Custom Line series of turnouts includes a #8.
Rich
Thanks Rich I corrected my post. This is an older catalog but list the length of a #6 at 12" and a #8 at 13.5"
Henry, how dare you call me Mike. That guy already gets too much credit for others contributions. [(-D]
Rich
Sorry Rich, need more coffee to properly read catalog pages and the forum
[bow]
What’s funny is my boss just addressed me as Mike in an email this morning. He was probbaly talking to our coworker Mike while composing the email to me, he definitely meant the email for me because it is a task for my area of expertise, not Mike’s.
–Randy
There is a sad post in one of the Groups.io dcc forums. An elderly engineer is trying to get wireless to work and one of his confounding problems is he has early Alzheimers. [angel]
Did I hear Mike ? Hello? [:^)]
There’s a few of us in here!
Mike.
If the locomotives in question have deeper wheel flanges than the turnout will accommodate, it is possible to reduce the flanges.
I did so on this IHC Mogul…
…by removing the body shell and then connecting jumper wires to the motor contacts from the DC controller in my workshop.
Then, while holding the loco upright in my free hand, with the drivers turning at a medium speed, I brought the spinning face of a cut-off disk in a motor tool to bear lightly, from below, on a wheel flange.
It’s important to keep the loco above the cut-off disk, to avoid getting the ground-off material into the mechanism.
Don’t maintain contact for more than a few seconds, especially if the wheel has plastic centres (as does the IHC loco), but simply move on to another wheel. Repeat this process, as necessary, until the flanges on all powered wheels have been reduced to an acceptable profile.
For non-powered wheelsets, you may be able to remove one wheel, then chuck that end of the axle in an electric drill to repeat the process. For the IHC loco, though, I simply replaced the stock wheelset.
I should also mention that I encountered a problem with a few Atlas #6 CustomLine turnouts when a friend visited to run some of his larger brass locomotives (Mikes, Mountains, and Northerns), which seemed to stall repeatedly on some of those turnouts.
It had me stymied, as my plastic Mikados and Mount
When I was with my old club I took on the responsibility of tuning all of the 100 or so Atlas and Peco turnouts so that they would work reliably once installed. I found that most of the Atlas #4 and #6 frogs and the plastic around them were higher than the connecting rails. I slid a small block of steel along the rails from one side of the frog to the other to detect the height differences. I used a standard mill file to reduce the height of the frogs.
Dave