I have a nice A/B unit AMD Life-like Proto 1000 UP E-6, 6 wheel trucks front and back with full power on all 12. The front most truck (wheel set) will not go thru a switch frog without derailing I’ve filed and filed on the frog area. All of my other engines (steam & diesel) work just fine. I can run the E-6 thru backwards and it works just fine. Any ideas out there??
Remove the wheelsets from the front truck and rearrange them so the set that was at the front of the truck is at the back of the truck and vise versa. I had the same problem with a couple of my Proto 2000 E-6’s.
There are two things I can think to check.
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Are all the wheels in gauge? This is where an NMRA standards gauge comes in handy.
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Do all the wheels sit flat on a perfectly flat surface? It is possible that some of the wheels are not sitting flat on the track, and then a flange rides up on the switch. My Athearn Genesis SD75M had this problem, but I fixed it so the wheels all sit flat on the track, and it’s worked great ever since.[:D]
Make sure the sideframes are on correctly, I’ve had journals pop off the axels which makes the sideframe sit askew and can catch on switches or lift a wheel off the rail.
lay off the frog already. if you other equipment goes through it ok then the problem is not the frog.
grizlump
It sounds like a wheel-gauge problem on your front truck. You should check them with an NMRA gauge and see that the front set isn’t too wide.
Filing your frogs is only going to eventually affect your other locos.
I’ve got a BLI A-B-B E-6 set that just flows through every turnout I have. I’d really say it’s your wheels. How’s the Proto balanced as far as the trucks ‘sitting’ flat on the track? I’ve heard stories about warped trucks on the Protos. Hope it’s not that, just an out of gauge set, which should be easy to fix.
Tom [:)]
Proto E units seem to often have the wheels set quite a bit narrower than gauge. Check that, I know on mine I usually had to move the wheels out a little bit before I got smooth operation.