I have been cursing my Atlas Mark III switches for some time now. Because my DCC-equipped locos keep stalling over them in apparently random spots-- though it always seems to involve the frog somehow. And despite my efforts to fix the situation seems to be getting worse…
But I have finally figured out the problem, and the solution…
Turns out I was probably my own worst enemy.
Initially most (perhaps all, I don’t remember) of my locos, of varying wheelbase and configuration, ran just fine through the turnouts-- well, reasonably fine anyway. But I was having some derailment issues with some of the turnouts and attempting to solve that problem by filing the ends of the rails a little to make them a little smoother.
The frogs are metal and painted black. Which means they’re normally insulated. When I filed the turnouts I probably hit the frogs a little with the file which rubbed the paint off and set up a situation where the wheels could short out, and I didn’t realize it.
It took me a while of slowly running locos back and forth across the turnout to finally figure it out-- but I did. The turnouts that cause the locos to stall and/or short out, are the ones that have scratches in the paint on the frogs and bare metal shining through.
On a hunch I took some of my wife’s nail polish and re-painted the frog… pink… but we’ll talk about that later…
And it worked. No more problems, no more stalling or shorting, and all of my locos can slide through the switch just fine-- w/o electrical problems anyway.
So I just wanted to post this in case anybody else is out there having problems with Atlas code 100 Mark III turnouts, or something similar, and is having problems with locos stalling or shorting on the turnout.
They work fine initially, but over time start accumulating problems-- because the paint is getting scratched off the frogs for whatever reason.
Hope this helps!
John