I recently expanded the staging area on my layout with several Peco SL-99 3-way Code 100 turnouts. Now, some (maybe 10%) of my rolling stock (which have heretofore been operating flawlessly on the rest of the layout for quite some time) has begun derailing entering these turnouts only with the points thrown to the left. (To route left both sets of points are thrown.) There are also cars that don’t derail when pulled in a consist but will easily derail if the car is pushed through the turnout by hand. What I see happening is that the right hand wheels want to climb up the rail head as it comes in contact with the second set of points and the truck begins to turn left.
I have checked and double checked the gauge on all offending trucks and all are in tune.
I have done some slight filing and burnishing of the points but so far no joy. I am reluctant to do too much further tinkering without advice lest I royally screw up the turnout altogether. Any guidance appreciated.
Secondly, I have inadvertantly dislodged the over-centre spring from the slot in one of the tiebars and am wondering if anyone has any tips for for putting the spring back in place?
I have had the same trouble. But, what I ended up doing which seem to fix this issue on all my 3-way’s is taking the three way apart and filing the tips of the movable rail , inside only, to a much rounded tip. What this did for me was let the pressure of the wheel glide more gradually into the turnout. also , I changed mthe pressure of the rail spring to a much tighter fit. Make sure the inside rail is sitting lower just a little than the rest. ,at the frog I filed a 30 degree by about .015 to allow a much glider effect. Thats all I did. Oh one more thing. Make REAL SURE the turn out is not warped or sitting uneven on the layout sub roadbed .
Some good tips for sure. No warping or un-eveness detected - the turnout is resting directly on the plywood sub-roadbed (nothing fancy in the staging area).
Yep, a bit of filing is what I started with. There is a distinct “click” as the flange of the wheel passes by the second point. I’ve examined the derailing as best as possible under several powers of magnification and bright lighting but for the life of me can’t detect exactly what is going on. Pending further advice I’ll do some more filing in small increments and see if I can make any headway. Thanks.
First thing to do is to get a NMRA gauge, and using the “points” gauge on it, check the gauge at the point where the stock rail and the points come together. It sounds tight.
If they are in gauge one thing I would do is to file a champer at the end of each point. Holding the file at about a 30 angle, and tilted about 5 toward the outside rails. This will allow you to file out a small “wedge” onto the ends of the points. This will feather the point more and allow a smoother transition from the stock rails to the points.
Check your guard rail clearances. I had trouble with some Peco turnouts, not 3-way, where the clearances were too great, allowing the wheel to pick the point of the frog as the wheels passed through. I ended up shimming the guard rails.
What I suggest you do is take a single truck and push it through the turnout with your finger. You can easily hold the wheelsets to one or the other side and see if the wheels pass through without derailing when one side or the other is favored. If derailments happen in the area of a guardrail when you do this, you may have a similiar excess clearance issue.
Well, shame on me. I’ve got the gauge right here and was so engrossed in blaming bad wheel sets that I was measuring I never used it to check the points. Indeed, the “points” gauge shows an extremely tight fit for all of the offending points on the four turnouts. The gauge can be pushed into place with a little pressure but close examination shows it distorting the geometry of the point against the stock rail when doing so. So this is an “ah hah” moment and I will proceed to follow the recommended filing procedure this afternoon and see if I can get this problem cleared up. Thanks to all for your guidance.
Glad to hear you found the issue. I have a new Peco 3 way, that I didn’t install yet. So I need to make sure the rails are in guage before I install it.
Frank you are talking about me and I stand by that Peco Rules now I will say I do have two 3 way turnouts and have not installed them yet so I can’t say how good they will be.
I have 24 Peco turnouts on my layout, and not one single one of them has been out of guage. Never had any problem with any of them. Except of course user error, when I inadvertantly popped the tension screw out on two switches during installing them.
When I hear the people with Atlas and Walthers turnouts have to always adjust them, I think “good thing I have Peco”.
What you talking about? Then why when I check them with my gauge, they are within the accepted tolerances, and I never have any issues with rolling stock derailing?
Are you talking about code 100 or code 83, If it is code 100 they are made to both HO/OO rolling stock. Therefore I doubt they will be as close to specs as those made solely for HO.
Furthermore code 100 Peco do not match North American prototype an this alone is a deal breaker for me. Peco code 83 is a different story tough.
The problems associated with any turnout where it is tight in gauge can be rectified by using a soldering iron. The “spikes” have to be softened to the point that with a wide screwdriver, the rail can be pushed out to make the gauge better.
If you have no experience doing this to a commercial turnout, I wouldn’t recommend trying it on a three-way to start.
Now if this turnout was hand laid all you’d have to do is respike/solder it to the ties.
I can’t speak to the Peco 3-way turnouts because I don’t have any.
But, I do have three Walthers Shinohara 3-way turnouts on my layout, and all three required a fair amount of “tuning” to get them to operate correctly.
Incidentally, they are now installed end to end at the entrance to my coach yard, so it is critical that they operate correctly and remain in gauge.
Listen to David if he says that all Peco 3-way turnouts need “tuning” out of the box.
Much as I love Peco turnouts, I’ve also had problems with the so-called “three way”. Nothing else made by Peco has ever given me a problem, including a couple of their double slip switchs, not with gauge or anything else. But these darn 3 ways
Maybe it should be pointed out that these aren’t really a three-way switch which has one set of points that can assume three different positions. These have two sets of points, and are actually a lap switch. This is a bit more complicated as one set of points bears against the other as the switch in thrown. The points flex a bit.
A few years ago I tried using these in staging areas as well, as they give more length than two turnouts, obviously. One of these was in a hidden yard with only about 8 inchs of clearence that was giving me problems as well. There have been some good ideas put forth here but my solution was a bit different. I found that one set of points wasn’t settling against the stock rail too well. I was able to fix this by using a Caboose ground throw to really seat the rail. So far this has helped, as the derailments were only happening when the train took the leftmost track. I just hope it stays that way. It has so far but if it keeps up I’m going to pull it out and use normal turnouts. Perhaps adding a thin plastic shim to the guardrails would help as well.
Someone pointed out that Peco trackage was designed to handle both HO and OO scale trains. Actually that’s more of a case of semantics, as British OO whlie built to 1/76 scale (I think that’s OO) is designed to run on normal HO trackage. There are some fine scalers that actually use true OO gauge just like we have P:87 and P:48 users but that’s not common. I think the large guageways are due to the really big flanges that Hornby and European builders supplied on their equipment-much worse than the 1950’s HO clunkers.
Another thing to recall about Pecos is , as someone pointed out, their difference in
Generally following the advice of cjcrescent I filed the points to almost razor thin at the very tip of the point. In addition, I filed an oh-so-slight notch in the stock rail where the point comes in contact with it. This provides a recess for the point to rest in just like the configuration of the other points on the turnout. Then, when things measured correctly and I could push a test truck through with success and then individual cars, I finished off the area by burnishing the rail surfaces with a 600 grit metal polishing abrasive. The result was a transition at the point that is so smooth and slick that there is no way a flange can climb up the rail head. So far so good. I’ve done 2 1/2 of my 4 3-way turnouts and its taking a bit more than an hour to do each one. As I clean up and start running some consists through for a reliability check I’m sure I may have to go back and perhaps do some tune up filing and smoothing. Thanks again for everyone’s advice.