I posted some time ago that I was having trouble with engines derailing and many of you referred me to my track work and yep alot of it was my rails were higher on one side going into or out of turnouts, expansion , etc. I have now corrected my trackwork and my GP38-2 and SW 9 run beautiful. But now I’m having trouble with my brand new Kato Metra 163 F40PH. It constantly derails. And im noticing that it does it more when i have the Kato commuter cars attached??? Why I’m not sure. It will still derail without them but not nearly as much. Could the wheels on a brand new loco be out of alignment or something like that? How could I check this out? I brought a Kadee Coupler Gauge to see if it was the couplers
To check wheel gauge, you need the NMRA gauge. It’s a flat piece of stainless steel that checks wheel gauge and many other crucial track/wheel interface measurements, as well as clearance along the track. From the sounds of your track, you may find out lots of things to fix.
It is possible for a new loco to have misgauged wheels. Kato has a good rep, but any assembled product can run into issues. Doesn’t hurt to check everything you put on the rails the first time.
Good day [:)]
In addition to the other suggestions.
Is the loco derailing on a curve? Is there anything interfering with the swing of the trucks? Pick ups, wiring & etc.
If the curves are close to the minimum turning radius of the loco, then any little imperfection in track work will be magnified.
Good luck
Lee
First thing I would check for is some piece of packing material slipped in somewhere and is preventing swiveling of the trucks. Or, there might be some kind of shipping restraint that you have to remove. The instruction ought to tell you about that. Or there is some slight assembly required somewhere. All my Proto 2K diesels came with the shell packed separately from the drive and I had to assemble them before running them. I’m not familiar with Kato, but there might be something you have to do to the locomotive before running it.
If you have two locomotives that make it around your layout and stay on the track, and one new locomotive that derails, that points the finger at the derailing locomotive. It may be that further improvement to your track is possible, but the fact that two other locomotives can handle it, suggests strongly, that the new Kato should handle it too. This assumes that your Kato is a diesel (I never heard of Kato making steamers, but you never know) and that it is a four axle diesel. Six axle diesels and steamers are are fussier about trackwork than four axle diesels.
I would trouble shoot just the locomotive, running by itself. That simplifies things. Cars that aren’t on the track cannot contribute to the derailment. You are trying to localize the problem and fix it. Taking the cars off the track localizes the problem to the locomotive.
Now get your eyes right down to track level and maybe you can see going wrong. Perhaps a coupler glad hand or a low hanging part is snagging on turnouts. Perhaps a wheel is climbing up and over the railhead. Perhaps the trucks aren’t swiveling properly. Does it always derail at the same place? Does it make a difference which way it runs. forward or backward? Perhaps it’s hitting something in the trackwork that is just enough to kick it off the track.
Yes most of the time it derails on a curve either going into it or coming out of it. Then sometimes the wheels correct themselves and jump back on track. Its crazy. My curves are 18’’ and 22’’ radius. Since these are F40PH aren’t they able to run on the tighest of curves? The loco isn’t that long. I would expect if anything the commuter cars to be derailing more but they’re not and they’re 85’ scale feet long. I wish I knew someone more experienced than me to come over and help me with the track work. Since im a beginner I don’t often know what to look for and that makes me extremely frustrated. Only train I run is my SW9 as it almost never derails, even before I fixed alot of the track work.
This one statement suggests to me that the frame is being tilted by the other truck, and that the other truck is tilting the fame because the tracks force it to run at a certain angle not conducive to what the leading truck needs to stay railed. IOW, you still have rails that are low at some point along a curve (for the front truck), or else too high rearward where the rear truck has to lift and tilt the frame, this forcing the lead truck to get lightened enough that the outer wheels on the curve lift up and out of the rails.
It might help to get a good quality planar surface, a rigid and smooth one, face down along the curve. Get light behind the item lying on the rails, and get your eyes down to rail-top level. You will probably be surprised at how much undulation or leveling disparity there is across the rails.
Crandell