I have two turnouts back-to-back, in the following arrangement:
#8 handlaid with the diverging route going on to a 3" section of flextrack, followed by a Shinohara curved #7 1/2.
The approach to the points end of the handlaid is hardwired, as is the 3" flex filler on the far side of the frog, as you’d expect.
My K4s has no trouble getting onto that turnout, but it will not cross the frog on the diverging route!! It seems fine on the through route!!! What’s worse is that my Heritage 0-6-0, all 2" of driver wheelbase, has no trouble whatsoever going through that entire turnout, diverging and through, backwards and forwards.
The wiring is fine if the 0-6-0 has any say in it, and it must be right if the through route is acceptable to the K4s. So what am I not seeing?
Could be lots of things. The solution to one of my most troublesome was the discovery that the brass screw that held the tender coupler hung down just far enough to touch some of the track. Nail polish did not help, but a small file did. I had to stare at the train for hours to finally see what the problem was. Good luck and let us know what you finaly found.
Time to get out the VOM meter and start tracking where the voltage is in the rails and where it goes when you throw the turnout. Don’t forget to check the polarity! It might be a crossed wire through the frog that is reversing the polarity past the frog, although if one engine passes without incident, I can’t imagine that polarity would be an issue. But I’ve been fooled by stuff like that before!
The frog of the #8 going into the points of the Shinohara?
Is it shorting out, or stalling? How are you powering the frog? It could be the larger locomotive is “torquing” the diverging rail so that is is pulling away from the outside rail losing electrical contact.
There is no short, just the loco stopping short when it gets no power. All other parts of the layout are perking away, steamers hissing, moving, etc.
If I pu***he K4 forward about 3-4", it regains power and continues on. What I can’t accept is that the little 0-6-0 has no problems, so maybe ARTHILL’s suggestion is worth a close look.
OKAYYY!!!..I did a slow role until it quit, tilted the loco boiler away from me just enough to see where the far drivers were sitting, and you’ll never guess which sides of the gapped, non-powered frog the loco fails. Yup, smack dab in between them. [D)]
Colour me stupid.
But, in my defense, I have gotten it through at least three other #8 handlaid turnouts, all gapped the same way with no frogs powered. It would be weird if I had to jump that one frog…[%-)].
Anyway, thanks for the input, fellas. I appreciate your jumping in for me.
Sounds to me that you have determined that the drivers are the culprit. Have you tried rolling the locomotive and tender through that turnout separately? I had a similar problem with my BLI 2-8-2 a couple of months ago and it turned out that the pickups on the tender were TOO loose. Once I tightened them up, they were just peachy. I would run the locomotive and the tender through separately anyhow - just so you know FOR SURE the drivers are the problem area.
My [2c]. (Crandell, let me know if you need change.) We’ll figure this one out.
Thanks, Tom…turns out you are on to something. I placed my finger on the tender as it rolled through on a recent trial, tried pressing the tender down and rocking it very gently side-to-side, which DID improve the response. So, I removed the loco, inverted it, and cleaned the axles on the tender which had black oily deposits on them over the wiper areas. Sure enough, placed it back on the track. I think it gave me the middle finger when it rolled through the frog.
So, as a doctor of medicine told one of his clients who had come to him with symptoms and expressing fear of a rare incurable disease, “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.”
Lesson for today, Crandell, is that even if your loco is new, even if it has given you no problems in the past, particularly when other locos don’t seem to have the problem,…
LOOK FOR DIRTY PICKUPS, AXLES, WHEELS, OR RAILS…FIRST! Even new locos can get dirty quickly…they may even have been shipped that way.
Electricity is like magic. If you get the incantation right, it works, The smallest error and it doesn’t. Harry Potter couldn’t get some of them with out Hermione. Glad you got yours. Till next time.
WE should check and clean the pickup’s and driver wheels on new locomotives. I even place electriclube on my engines before use. This makes sure I don’t spread dirt or oil on the tracks and switches. Dirty wheels or tracks will make the engine fail to run or run funny when lease expected.
