I originally built an industrial siding with Atlas N Snap switches in an allignment where the train engine needs to move forward and backward over two adjacent turnouts and both routs. My engine, a Walthers N 0-8-0 worked fine with these turnouts. I recently replaced these turnouts with Atlas N Custom Line switches due to their better appearance and suposedly tighter adherance the NMRA standards. I prepared the new turnouts by filing the points, etc.
Now my 0-8-0 has real trouble negotiating the adjacent turnouts, stalling at slow speeds and very rough running at higher speeds. I checked all the turnout clearances with a NMRA gauge and everything checked out. However when I checked the loco, the tender wheels turned out to be slightly two narrow by about a match book cover. I suspect that this is the issue because of the Custom Line tighter clearances. (The engine itself is right in gage according to the NMRA gage)
This tender also picks up power and is part of the drive. The wheels have two flanges-one for the track and one for the pick up. I removed the wheel sets and attempted to twist and tap them into gage, but none of the wheels would budge. I even tried placing wheel sets in the freezer for half an hour and they still won’t budge. The wheel sets fit into the side frames with an axel needle so i don’t think i can use a gear puller to adjust the gage.
Does anyone have any advice on how to adjust the tender wheels into NMRA gage?
Rough running the way you describe could be from poor electrical pickup problems.
Do the new turnouts have insulated (plastic) frogs? That will cause the loco to not pick up power when its wheels are on it.
Or if it has isolated (metal) frogs, but they are not receiving power, that will do it too. Metal frogs have to be electrically oriented to which side of the loco is on them as it goes through the turnout…
Hi SouthGate, yes the new turnouts have plastic frogs like all atlas code 80 turnouts. But so did the Snap sitches and the loco ran fine over those. With both the engine and tender wheels picking up power this should not be an issue. I still think it is the narrow gage of the tender wheels which are probably bumping up against the inner protection (check) rails adjacent to the frog which keep rolling stock wheels from picking the point on the frog. The Custom Line switches have a narrower gap equal to the NMRA check gage than the Snap switches which is why I replaced them. Also all the rail joints are are soldered exept for the joint between the two adjacent turnouts and there are powered feeds at both ends. Can anyone from Walthers say how the tender wheels are securedcd?
To conclude this topic, I appreciate all those who contributed! The problem was confirmed to be the wheel gage on the Walther’s USRA 0-8-0 tender rather than poor electrical conductivity. I have included a picture of the completed track realignment. As shown, there are two Atlas Custom Line “dead frog” turnouts in series over which frequent back and forth shunting of cars occurs. Once the track work was completed and wired the 0-8-0 would not run smoothly over the new tracks even though the turnouts were the newer “continuous” point rail that was supposed to improve electrical continuity. On a lark, I tried operating my Bachmann, dual mode 44 ton switcher over this track work and it operated rather smoothly with barely any hiccups. Going back to my suspicion of the tender’s slightly narrower than standard gauge was contributing, I bit the bullet and went to work on the problem which was not Easy! All 8 wheels on this tender are rigged to pickup power with an arrangement of four separate copper stampings that fit between the actual wheels and a small, inboard secondary flange on the wheel. A great arrangement for power pickup but you can see why the gage might be non standard because the wheels need to align with the pickups which extend vertically into the body so 1) the wheels aren’t ment to move easily on the axels and 2) there is very little leeway for spreading the wheels without ruining electrical pickup. What I did was remove each axel in turn and clamped a smooth jaw needle nose plier on the axel next to the wheel and hammered on the pliers with an Exacto ballpeen hammer an equal number of hits on each wheel, measuring the gauge constantly with an NMRA gauge until the spread was BARELY within tolerance. This took a LONG time as I said the wheels were not meant to move for obvious reasons. once the wheel spread was just at the bare minimum spread I replaced them in the trucks making sure the copper pickups fit in the slots on th wheels. Now the locomotive runs acceptably smooth at slow speeds over th track works, although both the loco and tender could use more weight which I am working on now. I hope this has been helpful to someone. I’m satisfied! Cheers!
