My W/S curved turnout has been giving me problems particularly with my Roundhouse 4-4-0. I am grasping at straws here but I found that a 6" steel ruler placed across the stock rails at the frog indicates that the frog is higher than the rest of the turnout. I guess about .010". Is this amount significant? If so, what can I do about it? The cork base is as flat as I can get it with sandpaper over a block of wood. I drilled holes in 3 places, one on each side of the frog and one between the points, and hold it down with track nails. This, and all my turnouts, need a .015 shim of styrene under them due to a variation of tie thichness between them and the Atlas flex track.
You may be grasping at straws, but you may also have found the log. [:)] To correct the problem (and it is a problem), use a soldering gun or iron. Press the edge of the steel ruler across the stock rails and frog, while heating the frog with the iron. When the plastic softens and the frog drops down, remove the heat immediately. This should bring the frog into vertical alignment.
And yes, 0.010" is significant, and enough to cause a derailment in a light 4-4-0.
10 thou must be a fairly big chunk of the total depth of an RP-25 flange I would think, so in light of its magnitude relative to the size of a 33/36" wheel, yeah, I’d say it was sufficient to cause problems in some instances.
Does that turnout lay nice and flat on a kitchen counter? Did you measure the frog height in such circumstances, Bruce? How did you arrive at the figure of 0.010"?
I read many months ago on a related thread, Bruce, that the frogs for these curved turnouts are not “curved” geometry frogs. I think it may have been Tim Warris himself who offered that tidbit. So, W/S took a straight #7-8 and flexed it into what they market as curved #7-8, but they ain’t. As I said to you a while back and on another thread, my curved #7.5 turnouts work okay except for their over-rated inner route curvature. It was with the slightly larger radius #8 that I began to notice fairly considerable wobbling of many rolling items when they went through it. I have gauged it, and it checks out sort of. I ground some metal off a wing rail that the tab didn’t want to slide through. Can’t say it improved the running much.
Sorry. I wish I had a simple and 100% cure for “our” problem, but I haven’t managed it yet.
-Crandell
be vewwy careful heating it. Secure the whole switch down, screws, spikes, whatever, have a good and HOT iron, screwdriver handy, heat it depressing down with the screwdriver, release heat immediatly when you know its placed, hold down with screw driver till set, cooled.
Otherwise you might file the frog down.
ONLY .010"??? Those must be WAY better quality than Atlas turnouts.[(-D] I had to file ALL my customline frogs down. I would be VERY afraid to take a soldering iron to my Atlas frogs. Maybe that’s the preferred method for the W/S, but I prefer the file method.[2c]
If the frog is all metal, as (I believe) all Shinohara turnouts are, a soldering iron works well. You should remove the heat [b]immediately[/]b] when the plastic begins to soften. The pressure from the steel rule will force the frog down to an appropriate level. As soon as the frog begins to move, remove the heat. Atlas frogs, of course are mostly plastic, so heat won’t work.
All Shinohara’s have metal frogs thats all I use on my layout but I havnt had any problems with them, Mike
My Atlas frogs seem to be metal. They are too high, so I was thinking of filing them down, but maybe I’ll try this soldering iron trick and see if it works.
g:
I have filed some of mine down. Watch your flangeway depth if you do that. I may well try the soldering-iron trick on the next one. Filing down frogs always makes me a little uneasy; I haven’t had any problems, but I’m still leaving bare zamac and running the risk of scarring rails.
If you end up with a shallow flangeway, you can clear it out with a hacksaw blade.
.010" is more than one might think. It’s a bit larger than the thickness of 3 sheets of typing paper.
BB: S. is right, you may well have found the timber that broke the camelback. Not to drift off topic, but I checked my MDC 2-6-0, which is a very similar design, and didn’t find wheel-drop to be significant. I do wonder if your traction tires are bulging from the tread (ugh; the kit Moguls had none), or perhaps causing unequal pull on one side, and shoving the wheels against the frog (this seems unlikely, given the long driver wheelbase). You might also try flattening the area the front-truck spring slides on; it seems to me that it can’t slide on the frame, with the screw there, so it should be able to slide freely on the truck.
Blind BRUCE:
‘Curved’ Turnnouts are always going to be more problematic than straight. (Geometry - aligned straight wheel flanges into curved flangeways if nothing else).
1. If you are truly a perfectionist:
2. If you want to run all RP-25 NMRA ( designed) wheels:
http://www.railwayeng.com/turnouts.htm
(Neither makes anything for code 100).
if the wheels on your loco are picking the point of the frog you might try putting a shim in the flangeway of the guard rail to keep the wheel from climbing on the frogpoint. i’ve done this on some switches that had worn out frog points and extended the life of them for a while.