I recently had to replace an Atlas #8 curved turnout which was having frequent derailments when full length passenger cars tried to pass through the inside curve. I’m basing this on memory but I believe it was advertised as having radii of 36"/32". This past week I was in my LHS and saw their new curved turnout which now comes in a box instead of a blister pack. They don’t present it as a #8 but do give the radii as 30"/22". I would need a side-by-side comparison to my #8 curved turnout to say for sure, but it seems to be the same size as what I had. If they are the same turnout, it would certainly explain why my passenger cars were derailing trying to negotiate a 22" radius curve.
Does anyone know for certain if these two turnouts have the same dimensions?
How old is this original curved turnout? Code 83 or code 100? I don’t remember Atlas selling a curved turnout that big?.
In fact Atlas never made curved turnouts in their regular track line until the current offerings. There was a brief time MANY years ago when they sold some ROCO track items, curved turnouts, slip switches, in Atlas packaging.
Are you sure the old one is Atlas? Again, how long have you had it?
The problem with curved turnouts described by number is frog angle only has a little to do with possible radius.
If you need really large curved turnouts you can actually cut the tie connectors and bend an Atlas #6 or #8 into a nice curved turnout.
The other choice of course is to build it yourself.
I don’t recall Atlas every having a curved turnout with 36/32" radius. OTOH, Walthers #8 has been labeled 36/32 inch from the 90’s until they discontinued their old line made by Shinohara. Those may be found on the secondary market if you hunt around.
My go-to manufacturer when it came to curved turnouts is Peco. I have one installed on my layout and even my Walthers 85’ passengers navigate the #7 turnout. Of course, they have Talgo trucks. I don’t know think they’d make it with body-mounted couplers. I just checked on the Walthers website and it says the 85’ Budd cars will negotiate 18" curves. I’m sure they look goofy with the overhang, but I’m sure with wider curves, they should look ok.
I use code 83 rail. I just checked the stamp on the bottom of the turnout I replaced and discovered that it is a Shinora turnout. What made me think it was an Atlas turnout is that it has an insulated frog. All my other Shinora turnouts have powered frogs that require special wiring to allow the polarity of the frog to be flipped.
This turnout was on one of the earliest parts of the layout that I contructed about 20 years ago. What I find odd is that the Peco #7 curved turnout I replaced it with has broader curves than the Shinora #8. Even though it has been a long time, I’m fairly certain that it was advertised as a 36"/32" radius turnout. I checked the inside curve with my Ribbonrail gauges and the inside curve is not even close to 32". My smallest gauge is 28# and that is close to the inside radius of the turnout.
If I had it to do over again, I would avoid a curved turnout on the approach to my main passenger station but a reconfiguration of the track at this point would be out of the question.
All my passenger cars have body mounted couplers and most of them can take the inside curve of the Peco #7 that I recently installed. The exception is my Walthers Budd cars. I don’t know why but these have been a major source of derailment problems for as long as I have had them. I don’t have nearly as many problems with their smooth sided Pullman cars and I can’t understand why. The Budd cars were all bought on ebay and I don’t know how old they are. Maybe the more recent cars don’t have the same flaws.
I would suspect the trucks to be the issue. I have some Walther’s B60 baggage cars and one was giving me fits. One of the trucks did not swivel freely and was warped. After a few emails and pictures with Walther’s they sent me a new one. That one had flash almost blocking the mounting hole and needed a cleanup with a knife and file.
There are two problems with Walthers passenger cars and they seem to be chronic, coupler swivel and truck swivel. It seems to me the problem is most acute with their Budd cars. I finally got fed up with trying to adjust them to make them work. With two of them I removed the reuseable parts, couplers and wheels, and smashed them to bits. There are a couple more on the chopping block if they don’t start to behave. I’m tired of spending so much time trying to fix garbage. It just isn’t worth the time or effort to do so.
The age old lesson here is that minimum curves and maximum sized equipment is living model train life on the edge…
The great Paul Mallery, aurthor of a number of books on the technical aspects of the hobby, and a primary founder of “The Model Railroad Club” in Union NJ, had some ideas about all this that are still resisted to this day.
In his view, 48" radius was the desired mainline minimum in HO to model full length passenger cars and mainline Class I operations - The modular standards follow his recommendations.
In 1966, the young Severna Park Model Railroad club was wise enough to adopt 36" radius as their minimum for mainline and passenger terminal trackage.
WHY? because it works. There was once a web site full of model train info, it is gone now, and I was only able to capture some of it. I never knew the guy or his real name - on his site he identified himself as “bud”. He presented endless technical documentation about curves, grades, trucks, couplers, motors, etc, etc - he too was of the opinion that an 85’ HO passenger car, even on 36" radius, was working at “the hairy edge” of the engineering.
I know, we don’t all have that kind of space. Even I could find no way to meet a reasonable number of my goals in my space with 48" radius as a minimum. I was able to stay at and above 36", with a great many of the curves being in the low to mid 40’s.
They aren’t worth fixing. I spend too much of my hobby time trying to fix garbage merchandise. If I have to fiddle with something for more than 15 minutes to get it to work the way it should have right out of the box, it’s going in the trash, in tiny little pieces. I then cross that company’s product line off my list. I did that with Walthers passenger cars a long time ago.
I established 36" as the minimum radius for my mainline with the outside curve of my double track mainline being 38". I compromised that standard for the approach to my passenger station thinking I could get away with it. That has proven to be a mistake. Mo
I have established a 32" minimum radius for curves on my layout. If I could afford the space, I would move up to 36" minimum radius. The use of 40" minimum radius for curves would only be in my dreams. All that said, even if I had the space, a 48" minimum radius for curves does not seem to be necessary at all.
I sell it. I’ve probably returned/resold 75% of the model railroading stuff I have ever bought. Yep. Its amazing how many products simply don’t work as you expect them to.
Not about passenger cars, but I just received 2 Atlas U23bs with Loksound V5. They vibrate when they run. I can see it, and I can hear the couplers chatter when coupled to a car and the sound is on mute, proving what I’m seeing. Doesn’t happen with other Atlas Loksounds, but it did also happen with Intermountain U18Bs back when they came out.
Oh well. On they go to the return bin or the resale market, like the majority of stuff I bought over the past two years.
Its got to be because of changes in manufacturing processes/ third party vendors nearly each and every time a new run of something is produced. No consistency.
But close coupled with working diaphragms, they look so good once you get around 40" and above. And when you start talking about double track, your outer tracks get up around 40" pretty easily even with 36" as a minimum. Just look at my layout and consider the multi track concentric curves, and ones that are bigger, just because the room is there. Most of my 36" curves are viewed from the inside, another advantage of viewing the layout from inside the circle.
Yes, I have put a lot of thought and into all these details over the years.
One of the reasons I have regretted investing as much time and money into this hobby as I have is the overall poor quality of the products being sold. If I bought a toaster and it didn’t work right out of the box, I wouldn’t spend two seconds trying to fix it. It would go right back to Walmart. So why when we buy substandard merchandise in this hobby, we think it’s our responsibility to try to make it work? It makes no sense.
I remember about a year ago making the statement in another thread that 75% of the merchandise in this hobby is junk and lots of people took exception to that statement. To me,
John-NYBW
If I have to fiddle with something for more than 15 minutes to get it to work the way it should have right out of the box, it’s going in the trash, in tiny little pieces.
Sidebar rant:
I sell it. I’ve probably returned/resold 75% of the model railroading stuff I have ever bought. Yep. Its amazing how many products simply don’t work as you expect them to.
Not about passenger cars, but I just received 2 Atlas U23bs with Loksound V5. They vibrate when they run. I can see it, and I can hear the couplers chatter when coupled to a car and the sound is on mute, proving what I’m seeing. Doesn’t happen with other Atlas Loksounds, but it did also happen with Intermountain U18Bs back when they came out.
Oh well. On they go to the return bin or the resale market, like the majority of stuff I bought over the past two years.
Its got to be because of changes in manufacturing processes/ third party vendors nearly each and every time a new run of something is produced. No consistency.
One of the reasons I have regretted investing as much time and money into this hobby as I have is the overall poor quality of the products being sold. If I bought a toaster and it didn’t work right out of the box, I wouldn’t spend two seconds trying to fix it. It would go right back to Walmart. So why when we buy substandard merchandise in this hobby, we think it’s our responsibility
John, I too get very frustrated with the Walthers passenger cars. However, I did find a ‘fix’ to make them run a little better on those tighter curves.
I had ordered from Kato their HO KATO Passenger car Coupler Adapter for Kadee® Standard Shank Coupler, 2 ea so that their Superliner Cars will run around my 24" curves in one area. This part works great. I had an extra pair and decided to replace the Walthers coupler pocket with the Kato coupler pocket. I did this to one of the earlier Walthers Amfleet I cars. And it worked! I did it to 2 more cars and while the cars themselves don’t run as well as they should, going around those tighter curves lets the cars run without coming off the tracks.