Ok all you mythbuster fans out there, let me know if there is any truth to this. I’m in Oscale 2 rail and a member of the club that I belong to has stated in the past that he was in HO. The reason he gives for getting out of HO was that you cannot back up trains in HO through switches without having derailments. His changing to O gave him more operating flexibility.
Personaly, whenever I have completed scratchbuilding and installing a switch, I run a 20 car freight backwards through the switch at full throttle just to test it.
Now, keep in mind that this guy is know to weave some far fetched tales. Therfor I am keeping an open mind about it.
SO is there any truth to this? Is there some better swtches that allow reverse operations? Let me know so I can put this to bed.
I have not had any trouble backing trains through turnouts (I am HO). As long as everything is weighted correctly, and your trackwork isn’t terrible, you should be OK. Maybe he was using lighter cars with talgo couplers. I have seen talgo couplers cause problems with backing trains in many situations.
There are three things that cause derailments and they apply to all scales. Couplers, track and trucks. If the work isn’t done right in the first place, it won’t work right. Your friend apparently didn’t do something right and didn’t know how to correct it or didn’t want to correct it and thinks that going to a larger scale will help. Bad trackwork and poor coupler/truck management has the same effect in any scale. Been there and done that.
If the HO rolling stock has horn hook couplers, it will derail when you try to back up through a curve or switch because a horn-hook coupler exerts sideways pressure when pushed. This is especially true if they are truck-mounted couplers, because the sideways pressure will be on the wheels, which will tend to push them off of the track.
If you use body-mounted Kadee couplers or one of their clones, you will not have such derailments because the pressure is exerted straight onto the body. I have backed a 36-car train through two switches and then up a 2 percent grade and around a 180 degree curve with no derailments using Kadee couplers, but I could not do that with horn-hooks, even if they were body mounted.
Your friend was possibly using cheap, underweight, Christmas train set rolling stock with plastic wheels, horn hook couplers, and poorly laid track.
I have built layouts in both HO and N scale and have run 25+ car trains backwards over the entire layout while testing, which, of course, includes turnouts.
The man’s statement tells you something about the quality of his trackwork and/or rolling stock.
It occurs to me that if his statement was true, HO scale would no longer be with us, since backing moves through a T/O are a pretty basic operation NOT to be able to do.
I still can’t claim any great experience in MRR, and only some in HO, but this is what I know…to date:
Mixed couplers, bad couplers, and really good track don’t come out too well in the wash.
Good couplers, good track, and bad turnouts don’t come out all that well in the wash, but a damned sight better’n the first scenario.
I have used commercial and hand laid. There is no comparison…there just isn’t. Next best are the Walther’s Shinohara (never seen or used a Micro Engineering, so I can’t say, but my guess is the ME are neck and neck, or ahead by a nose). Peco after that, then the rest. Remember, your experience can be different.
I back trains through turnouts and do well, but it is best to go slow…so the fact is that for many of us, I suspect, your friend isn’t far off. And it doesn’t have to be turnouts…tight curves, bad transitions, they all conspire to make us angry. Let the fight begin.
I agree with most of the things said already and I have found that the following factors will determine whether a derailment will occur or not in HO gauge.
Turnout points, wheel flanges, and coupler heights must be in gauge. (An NMRA gauge is a must to check track gauge and wheel flange alignment. A Kadee coupler height gauge is a must to check the couplers.) Filing a small angle on the ends of the point rails will help the car go thru the turnout without “picking” the rail and derailing.
The car must be heavy enough so that the trucks won’t bind and pop off the track when shoving long stings of heavy cars thru the turnout. Most of my rolling stock is between 12-14 ounces. heavier than the standard of 8 ounces. My cars are very heavy, but they don’t derail when backing thru a turnout.
Metal wheel sets do wonders to improve the performance of the trucks. They freespin better than plastic wheels and the flanges are usually wider and heavier than plastic wheels which holds the rails better.
As cacole stated…hook and horn couplers are an automatic derailment. Metal KADEE couplers are a must. (Not to mention that they look more realistic for the prototype purest in this hobby.)
Trains should not back thru a turnout at warp speed…(They don’t even do that on the real railroads.) …chuck
I have actually had some derailments going through turn outs backwards but then again most of my rolling stock has horn hook couplers. But I am working on swicthing them to kadees [:)] wich are superior to horn hooks.
This is what I thought all along but just needed to hear it.
What still perplexes me is why he still believes this. He visits several MR’s a year in all scales. It seems unlikely that he would have seen all of them without seeing a backup move.
He is also a standards stickler so I would find it hard to believe that the trackwork and cars would be subpar. The next time this is brought up I will call him on it.
This refers to HOj, 1:80 scale on 16.5mm gauge track, using NMRA HO standards for wheels and trackwork.
My standard test for new trackwork (Including hand laid specialwork) is to back a full-length train of my most derailment-prone cars through it at track speed - with D50380 for motive power. (If there is even the slightest defect, that Mike’s tender will find it!) 95+ percent of the time, that first run is problem free. I’ve never required more than three between-run tweaking sessions to achieve acceptable (derailment-free) operation.
Of course, I use body mounted Kadee couplers, but the ‘derailment tester’ includes all my pizza cutter flanges and some cars so light that a sneeze will blow them over. Most of my rolling stock has RP25 flanges and metal wheels - but some of my body-mounted couplers are mounted on 4-wheel cars. Still, I pride myself in being able to build derailment-free trackage.
IMHO, the ‘former HO modeler’ in the initial post might have been trying to back cheap toy train cars through slapped-together 18" radius sectional track at speeds measured in Mach numbers. Derailments under those conditions are as certain as sunset - but hardly representative of normal HO practice.
[%-)]Huh? Somebody wasn’t doing something right. Backing a long train through a turnout is how I check mine. I consider the track work good if I can back through at about 1/2 speed.
Properly gauged wheels and properly gauged switches and body mounted couplers - I am in N-Scale where truck-mounted couplers are the rule - will usually keep the gremlins at bay - although there are still those maddenling occasions when the gremlins still win.
I always try to back when I have to pick up a wayward car but I don’t make a fetish of it and there are still occasions when I haul out the 0-5-0 switcher for that purpose. Lets give a cheer for the good ole’ 0-5-0 switcher.
I operate on a friends’ large HO scale layout, and we think nothing of backing long trains (30 cars or more) through his switches and trackwork, no matter how complicated. He’s laid the track and turnouts properly and worked on them so they work flawlessly.
Sounds like your friend who stated the myth isn’t much of a person to lay track and in preparing his rolling stock so it will work properly. “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools for his poor work”!
I have a neighbor who’s a rivet-counter. Even so, he tried doing all his trackwork fast and cheap without checking it as he went along and ended up paying the price for his haste. I use Bachmann’s sectional EZ track and I know somewhere out there somebody is thinking that stuff is a disaster waiting to happen. I check every piece of track before it’s put down AND after it’s in place to make sure it’s in gauge and has no kinks. This gives me good track that I can back a long train around at warp speed without derailing, even though the track has some rises and dips in it. These rises and dips aren’t real sudden and most were planned as part of the layout. Sight down a real track (not one used by passenger trains) and tell me it’s table-top flat and perfect. It won’t be. There will be slight sways from side to side and slight rises and dips. I have this type of thing going on on my layout, some I planned and some just appeared as I went along. Even so, I rarely have derailments, even if I run a train backwards at speeds that would make the space shuttle envious. Good trackwork is a definate plus, no matter what kind of track you’re using, flex, hand-laid or sectional.
One thing does make a difference. The smaller the scale the more a 1/16" off affects your operation. I’m not advocating sloppy trackwork, but your tolerances in smaller scales must be tighter. A track defect unnoticed in O derails the train in N.
Also, the materials we use in our models are not always scaled down the same. Smaller models tend to have thicker pieces relatively speaking which makes for a stiffer car which is more derailment prone.
What you are describing is exactly what happened to me. In the late ‘80s I tried building a layout for my son with some old Tyco stuff I had stored away. Once I replaced the Tyco track with Atlas, body mounted Kadee’s and went with Athearn / MDC trucks the derailments stopped.
HO train set stuff is notorious for having poor quality.
I and my friends routinely back up anything from 30 to 75 cars through yard leads & ladders, snake through a set of 3 doubleslips, (Peko), etc. The cars are a mix of cheap to expensive, but all are KD’d & NMRA weighted. I won’t say there are never any derailments, but they are rare and can usually be traced to operator error. We’re modelling the D&H 60s to 80s period so the majority of cars are 40-60 feet in length.
I used mostly Atlas & Peco turnouts, all of them adjusted and fine turned, most of which have been curved to some degree to fit the situation, (makes everything look more like handlaid and the real world and simple to do). The track is mostly Model Power code 100 flex (I always preferred MP’s spike detail over Atlas and it was cheaper too! It’s held up just as well as the Atlas over the past 25 years, a lot of it is on it’s 3rd ballasted layout).
This is definitely a myth. Or poor tracklaying skills. I use all Atlas Code 83track - some of the ‘experts’ poo-poo Atlas track components as being very poor quality, but I have no problems. My biggest loco is a 4-8-4 Northern, most of my locos are 4-axle diesels. I do run full length 85-foot passenger cars, but mostly 40 and 50-foot freight cars. All cars have body ounted couplers - truck-mounted couplers are prone to pushing the truck sideways over turnouts, which can cause derailments. My mainline turnouts are #6, my yard has #4. My curve radius is about 30-32" (I say about because I drew out a detail plan but laid the curves mostly by eye rather than trying to trace a perfect line on the benchwork). I can run said 85-foot cars (with body mounted couplers and diaphragms) around the layout at ludicrous speed, even through #6 crossovers. My steam loco will traverse the lauout at ludicrous speed, forwards and backwards, through the crossovers and just straight around. I’ve tested rollign characteristics of various truck/wheel combinations by taking a plain truck fitted with the wheels and shoving it around the layout. The good ones can m