I need some help! I have two athearn genesis engines and when I run them both have a problem with the front axle jumping off the tracks. I have Atlas,and other Athearn six axles that run fine. It appears the front flange and axle are two short or there is to much play in the front. My track workis fine and have a minimun radius is 24" . Does anyone know of a fix ?
You need to define “too short”. Are you saying that the wheels are not in gage, or are you saying that when the engine sits on the track it appears that the front axle is raised off the track?
A member of our club had purchased a bunch of some version of the Athearn SD70s and every one of them derailed. We determined that the problem actually was that the center axle on the truck actually sat too low in relation to the other two axles, so the truck would rock fore and aft pivoting on the center axle. I don’t think he ever found a cure.
I have the SD75M’s, two of them, and they are essentially the same things. I also had the outer wheels riding up over the rails on curves and derailing. The answer, unfortunately, was to wet the ballast, wait, and then lift the outer rail by about 1/32" and shim them once the ballast softened. Once the ballast dried, the results were worth it.
I wondered if the trucks were wonky, as I had read on other forums. When I placed the models on a flat clean, and shiny, counter top, they didn’t show any signs of light axle loads…twisting. Instead, the flanges were all making contact with the surface. The trucks were not able to gyrate as much as some I have seen, and this may be part of the problem. But, once I lifted the outside rails just a bit, my problems went away. To this day, no signs of wanting to derail.
In summary, your rails are not even, and if this happens on curves, lift the outer rails just enough to make the problem go away…no more than that.
Crandell