I have a layout designed so I could just highball my trains in repeating routes (well I guess that’s a circle, huh?) but I find that every 4 or 5 trips or so, the leading or trailing trucks of my steamers seems to derail in the middle of turnouts, either picking at the points, or the guard rails or somthing. I am using a mix of Gargrave switches and Ross switches, but the derailments are definitely not at the connections of one section of track to a turnout; they are 2 or 3 inches into the turnout. What gives?
I had some problems like this before and had to add weight to front pilot, A chunk of lead that I taped to it. I also banked the track section maybe an 1/8 th inch. Sometime it could be the wheel angle themselves? Hope this helps?
laz57
My old Lionel Scout was doing this on Lionel electric turnouts. I bent the metal front truck assembly a little to put more pressure on the trucks to the track. Seems to have solved the problem - on that loco, at least.
Charlie
What are the locomotive numbers? Any 2-wheel leading trucks?
I see the behavior on my 671, front or trailing trucks, and a 736, front or trailing trucks. The locos which track most trouble free are all diesels, because of the greater weight of the truck, I imagine. You know, when you have the 3 year old grandsons around, they want to see the trains GO; not stoping to rerail an errant unit every minute or two.