If a post about fixing shorts at the frogs of Shinohara turnouts is old news to you, please bypass this post.
For those whose eyes were irresistably drawn …MWAAA HAAAAA HAAAAA…! [:D]
I found soon after I installed several curved #7.5 turnouts from Shinohara that, alas, I was not to be favoured with the only five ever to have come off the assembly line as perfectly designed and built. Darn, eh?
So, since I had already learned of the cure, I painted the rails outboard of the wing rail and the frog rail gaps with a band 3/8" long of lacquer. That worked quite well for the most part, although I don’t happen to like the ever-blackening streak caused by energized locomotives traversing the frogs. This arrangement has even satisfied the long-based 2-10-4 with its one set of blind drivers in the #3 position.
Enter the T1.
No way, no how would that thing exit the yard without causing a short indication and power-down of the district. As I observed it more closely, I realized that the lead blind driver, of which #'s 2 and 3 are blind on this model that is true to prototype and has fixed engines, was making contact with the inner closure rail far down from where the lacquer band ended. So, for all it’s being blind, and even though the #7.5 should have afforded satisfactory curvature on its inner diverging route, when it came to the frog, those blind drivers overhang inward by a whopping margin. I tried using a grinding tool and ground out the rail head, adding styrene fillers to prevent shorting. They were too short!.
Finally, I got cheesed off and took the Dremel diamond cutter and cut a gap about 9/16" away from the engineered plastic gap on the inner (through route) closure rail, toward the points. It didn’
Being that I am easily confused with all the terms of turnouts and I have to usually look at a diagram for an excellent post like this… could you post a pic of your finished work??? I have a 7.5 R hand (superelevated too…ugh) that gives me occasional difficulty with my challenger…this may be it!!! Thanks!
This is a poor image, but it is all I have without spending half an hour reading up on macro shots and getting the right lighting, etc.
You can see the frog point…it is heaviliy shadowed just beyond it. Upper left, along that frog point, you can see the gray styrene wedge patch I placed there. Lower right, at the end of the wing rails, the “ears” of the curved stock rails, you can sort of see the thin gray styrene strip patches that I placed there. It was more to the right that the blind drivers were actuall touching that closure rail…if you can believe it…I couldn’t, and was looking right at it! That image told me I was farting around and wasting time… tearing out the first strip, more grinding, cutting, shaping, and gluing in a longer styrened strip…who needs it? So, if you come further to the right along the closest closure rail, you can see the dark gap I cut. It is a long way from the plastic gaps thoughtfully provided by Shinohara [|(], but that is what it took to get the T1 out of my yard!!! No more problems.
I was worried that my little 0-6-0 was now toast and relegated to strictly yard work, but nope.
If I ran into problems with one or more of my locos getting enough power to traverse the insulfrogs, I’d have to have a real hard think about it. As it stands, I have excellent results in every respect, except for this now-solved shorting problem.
My Fast Tracks turnouts have the rails soldered directly to PCB copper-clad ties with gaps filed between rails. The frogs are physically gapped from the rest of the rail structure, so no gaps have to be filed in the ties anywhere between those frog-isolating gaps. My other turnouts are Code 83 Peco or Shinoharas, and I have had to use some lacquer to keep the shorts to a minimum. Other than that, all locomotives like them as far as the length of the non-powered frog goes. I seem to have made the giant J1 happy, but the T1 is a whole new horse. Its rigidly mounted and separated engines have to squeeze around curves unlike the articulated engines. For the length of the gapped/unpowered frog, only the 0-6-0 is of concern, and it has passed over the new longer gap with no problem. That is because when the drivers are unpowered in the frog area, the tender behind it is still drawing power on the rails in front of the gap, and the decoder dutifully distributes that power to the motor and lights.
So, my recommendation would be to use the insulfrog, and where wheels make contact with two opposite polarities, cut new gaps just beyond where you see the drivers making the contact. That, in a nutshell, was what I resorted to doing.
Maybe BLI can sort of make the next run T1 Duplex Trucks swivel “Jest” this much like the Y-3 Proto 2-8-8-2 does; perhaps that combined with a touch of movement in all three axis might give the T1 a sort of Independant suspension and it can then walk all over any switch in the hobby.
Thank you for the picture. That switch looks like a BIG one. How long is that thing?
They are nearly 13.5" long. This is one of the curved turnouts that is more curved than advertized. Shinohara states that the outer curve is something like 32" and the inner is 28", but the inner is less than 24". I did not know this, and when I realized the problem, I cut all the webbing between the ties under the diverging and through routes, severed the long ties until the frog, severed the metal strips power strips, and then, with the points end joined and held tight, bent both routes after the frog outward getting myself another 2-3" of radius…made all the difference in the world for the inner route and my PRR J1 2-10-4.
I dug this thread back to life looking for radius information on the T1 Duplex.
I bought a set of Kato 28" (Closer to 29") radius curved track for one of the branches and tested the Duplex on it today.
BOY did those inside drivers offset. I knew that I will get some offset but NOT THAT MUCH. They are so far off the rail on the inside curve equal to a whole wheel width or a little more.
I know I will be going 34" curves with the Kato track, but with that huge offset, using the flanged driver set is out of the question and brings new doubt into the 34". I know of one club in my area with 40" curves and even with that… Im still not sure.
My question is pretty basic. If those switches are 28" inside radius, how did you ever get them to work?
Also didnt MR make a video of this thing running on thier MR Layout? Those curves are what? 32"? anyone know?
In the photo above, the inner radius is actually closer to 23" on this #7.5 by W/S. As I have explained in other threads over the last year, I cut the plastic webbing in between the ties outboard of the frog (i.e., not on the points end of the turnout, but the diverging and through routes). This, plus snipped tiny sections of plastic from the webbing under the outer rail on each route allowed, me to bend both routes outward to derive curves closer to 25" and 30" respectively.
Yes, the overhang is dismaying, and I would most definitely advise against using anything smaller than a curved #8 with the BLI Duplex. In fact, I have several curves in the 40+ radius where the blind drivers still hang over the inside rail very noticeably. So, with a #7.5 curved turnout, where the inner route is close to 24", you should expect even momentary contact between two rails near the frog caused by the wide tire on this loco’s blind drivers…which was the subject of this thread. For ease of mind, and to keep your investment of time down to a few minutes dealing with this problem, just cut the darned gaps about 1/2" (13mm) past the plastic gap fillers. The good part of this is that you only need to do it on the inside rails in each case. You don’t need to cut gaps in all four rails outboard of the frog because the short-causing driver overhang is only to the inside of the curve.
I believe that MR said it uses DCC friendly turnouts on their testbed, but I cannot be certain. In any event, 28" is plenty big for the T1, but on curved turnouts …
This has been my beef with any commercial turnouts I have seen - not one uses optimal wiring. The wiring scheme I discuss was published by Jack Work in April 1963 Model Railroader - 40+ years ago - and works wonderfully for both DC and DCC.
Atlas and Peco Insulfrog use insulated frogs that wreak havoc with my little 4-4-0s and any tank engines at slow speed. And the frogs are ugly plastic.
Peco, Shinohara/Walters, and most others (except Atlas) tie the 2 points together electrically - which can cause shorts like you have found.
How difficult is it for a manufacturer to electrically tie the points to the adjacent stock rail and mandate a powered frog? The powered frog allows the gaps to be moved to a point where shorts from wheels bridging rails cannot occur. For the powered frog, the physical length of the frog electrical section is no longer an issue.
I trust you are wiring your Fast Tracks creations to have the points of oppoiste polarity, and not tied together. That allows you to make the points with a shorter, more prototypical throw yet avoids electrical shorts. Then cut the gap in the closure rails where they are a comfortable distance from each other and from the stock rails.
Fred, the points/closure rails on the Fast Tracks turnouts are one piece, at least they are for the #8’s. This includes the wing guards for the frog. The two points/closure rails are powered by the stock rails, but via the copper cladding on the pcb ties. So as not to have a short between the two sides, a small trench is cut with a thin file between the points, thus severing the copper cladding, and therefore the potential for a short.
The jig has scribe marks where the frog is meant to be cut to isolate it. Since this results in an insulfrog, there need by no filed cladding gaps anywhere within the confines of the frog’s isolating gaps. There are, of course, gaps between the frog and the adjacent stock rails so that the cladding supporting the frog does not allow a short with the opposite stock rail.
Of all the turnouts I have, the Fast Tracks are laughably foolproof. They are really well thought-out, and the frog length on the #8’s are precisely 2.25"…my tiny 0-6-0 never misses a beat across them.
I agree with you, Fred, that the commercial turnouts are disappointing in many ways. My Peco #6 are nice, but the points rails are thin blades that don’t look prototypical to me. Still, they work reliably, and I do like the overcenter springs…that is nice for me. I don’t like the frog in my W/S curved #8…most things wobble noticeably through it. Not so with my curved 7.5’s.
This is the number one electrical reason for building turnouts from scratch. Just isolate each frog and power it apropriately. It’s best to make each point common with its stock rail; relying on electrical contact at the dirty and oily point-stock rail interface is guaranteed to lead to failure.
See the Mallery book for really simple ways to drive the points. It is so very much more easy to slice the rails with a Dremmel tool than to try and invent ways to create reliable contacts from the model switch points.
Paul Mallery was a doer and his methods are bullet proof.
The next run of the T1 should be a copy of the first and second run. I have the T1 and have been on several of the real T1’s while they were in service. They were a marvelous locomotive, but were a major failure for the PRR. ALCO models made a version as you are talking about which had the front and rear sets of engines on an articulation. It ruined the model to my way of thinking. The T1 models cannot be run on small radius curves without problems.
None of us that watched them could fault them as railfans, but the mechanical department could not keep up with them.
I dont know… this engine as it is now with the last run being a solid frame and non moving axles… whew wadda monstor. Hell, the tender’s 4 axled trucks push the limits on the 28 inch track. I will be using 34" on the main, what little of it is.
I have never seen these engines in real life but they must have been something in thier day.
Maybe we all get lucky and live long enough to see a QSI 4-4-6-4 (I think that is how it goes… left to right, front to back)
I consider myself very fortunate to have watched the T1’s in action. My dad was an avid railfan and we spent a lot of time on weekends trackside on the St. Louis mainline near our home in Illinois. The J1’s were the main freight power on the St. Louis main line during the late forties era and the T1’s and K4’s handled the passenger trains.
I have run my BLI T1 on a club layout that uses Peco # 6’s and the engine performed very well without any derailing or stalling. I only pulled a few passenger cars with it since that was the first time it was run when it was just a month old. It did not have any problems with the club layout. One person told me it was puffing too fast, but we pointed out to him it was a four cylinder locomotive and it would chuff in and out of sync.
I too hope the Q2 is a future product. It will have some of the same problems for layouts with curves less than 30", but it would be a great model for PRR fans.
