Dead rail on Walthers turnouts

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I have an unusual problem with a couple of my HO Walthers Code 83 turnouts. Recently both turnouts developed an electrically dead rail on the running end of the diverging route. The dead rail is just past the electrically isolated frog on each switch. The turnouts are isolated from the remainder of the diverging track and gain their electrical feed from the main line. A check of the rails show the points and other sections of rail have power in the proper places. [:S]

These turnouts are about ten years old and have been ballasted in place for several years. They have worked great until recently. Any ideas of what may have caused this malfunction? Have any of you experienced such an issue with Walthers turnouts?

2

I believe those are power routing, not sure, but my curved W/S turnouts are Code 83 and they have metal blade jumpers. It is possible your jumpers no longer make good contact, so the frog rails past the insulators are dead since you have gapped their far ends with the tracks beyond the turnouts.

If you were to temporarily fix small lengths of wire so that they bridge the gaps you left, and power up, see if the locomotives behave better. If they do, I’m pretty sure I have it right.

Crandell

3

Dragenrider:

Walther’s turnouts have a jumper from each of the two outside rails to the corresponding rail coming off the frog(right rail of main to right rail diverging,left to left). These are spot-soldered to the rails underneath the track.I have had several of these come loose at the solder joint.You could run a separate power wire to the dead rail,or a jumper from the rail beyond it - assuming it is ‘live’.

Mike

4

Those little copper jumpers are spot soldered and do break loose. It has happened to me.

Turn over the turnout and see if that is your problem.

Rich

5

Might be a bit tough for the OP since he says they are ballasted in place.[^o)] Using a meter would still work though.

6

Thanks, everyone. I seem to remember a post several months back on the issue of poor spot soldering on the Walther’s electrical contacts. I’ll run a jumper wire from the powered rails on the diverging route.

As they say down here in the south; Ya’ll take care now! Happy modeling. [:P]

7

Rob, it might be a bit tough, but what’s the OP gonna have to do once he uses a meter and discovers that electrical current is not getting through?

That’s right. He is going to have to turn over the turnout and see if that is the problem. So, he might as well do that right now.

Removing a ballasted turnout should be no big deal unless he used concrete to secure the turnout in place.

Rich

8

Same thing I’ve done when a jumper failure occurs under a ballasted turnout - drill a hole and solder a feeder to the affected rail from above, then apply paint and ballast repair as necessary. There’s no need to remove it from the layout.

I just had a jumper fail on a turnout a few days ago, right before an operating session. I left the turnout in place, added a feeder, and the problem was solved in only a few minutes. New jumpers can be made from something small like leftover decoder wire and are virtually invisible even when soldered to the top surface of the rail base. On a DCC friendly (non-power-routing) turnout, a feeder can be tied directly to the track bus so there’s only one hole to drill.

9

Rob, that is an interesting, if not elegant, solution. Thanks.

Rich