Hi fellas. I have a problem. I have a Walthers 6.5 right curved turnout and when my steam loco goes over it in reverse, at VERY slow speeds, it stops and the headlight goes out. If I press on the tender where the pickups are it will start moving. It seems as if the plastic is too high inside the frog not allowing it to make electrical contact. Is there a way to fix this on the layout? It works fine at speeds greater than 3. I have checked the electrical workings of the wheels and they all pick up electrically. I also checked the distance between the flange ways and guardrails with an NMRA gauge and it’s fine.
If it really is a problem with high plastic fill in the frog, a thin needle file or a Dremel cut-off disk might do the trick. It is just as likely, though, that when you press on the tender you are improving contact at points higher than the tires of the tender. Or, maybe pressing on the tender, if it is light (Bachmann’s are bad for that), causes the points to sit better if the points do not get good contact, or maybe the closure rail jumpers under the turnout make better contact.
Remember that the plastic liner in the frog acts as a ramp for the flanges so that they wheels don’t drop and bounce, maybe causing a deraiment. So, if you figure you have nothing to lose by gouging out some plastic in the frog, you may end up trading it for another form of grief. And, even if it doesn’t change a thing, and the problems are elsewhere, you will still have those other places to seek.
Is the loco in question and older one with deep flanges? Many older Rivarossi-built and other HO locos will not operate well on track smaller than code 100. If that’s the problem, you may wish to evaluate your options.
If flange depth is not the issue, perhaps the frog area wasn’t molded properly? I’m not sure how much would need to be removed, but a small file is one way.
Before modifying the track, though, make sure it’s not the loco that’s is the problem. Because you risk ending up creating new issues in trying to modify the track to accommodate a single loco with a problem.
Thanks for your fast answers. It’s a Bachman 2-8-0. I am 100% certain it’s not the loco. I bought it a few months ago. It runs fine and only gets hung up right at that particular frog, nowhere else.
This is why I asked, I figured that it might need to be gently filed but that’s an awfully narrow area to file and I have small files too. It’s code 83 track by the way.
It’s a Bachman 2-8-0. I did add some weight and it works okay. Like I said, if I press down on the tender RIGHT at that spot the light will come on and it will start moving. So I think the plastic inside the frog is a tiny bit too high. Sound right?
BTW: Layout coming along fine but slowly. I have a tunnel built, have to finish it and then make a mountain. This hobby, man everything happens so slowly.
Well, it’s intermittent. I tried placing a bottle of paint on the tender and it worked but then it hesitated. Ditto with a small flashlight. I get the feeling by moving it by hand that it’s binding through the frog. This is the straight part of the track too. Something like this could drive me nuts. Especially when I checked everything with a gauge.
Before you start cutting up the frog, make sure you have power at all ends of the turout. I have had a few Atlas turnouts that would do the same thing, the switch was not making contact at times. So having power via feeders at all sides fixed that problem. So when I built my current layout or add a new siding I make sure I have feeders going to all the sides of the turnout. No problems since!
Thanks Eric, but this is a DCC friendly insulfrog. I can power all sides, not a problem, but since the points are not powered does this make a difference?
If its an Atlas switch the problem is the switch, some are warped from the factory if you didnt put a track nail in the center hole in the tie by the frog the wheels will lift off and lose contact with the rail. Gently push down by the frog if it drops down to your road bed or table that is your culprit, been there and I have about 75 of them on my layout, got to be troublesome after a while but I read somewhere on here they had the same problem, Jim.
Thanks but it’s a Walthers insulfrog, not an Atlas electrofrog. I think it needs some gentle filing because it binds only at the frog on the “straight” part of the curve, not the turnout section.
It seems as if the frog plastic base is lifting one or more of the wheel off the track and then it loses power. So I will have to somehow file the base of the frog plastic.
This is what I’ve discovered so far through troubleshooting. First it works fine at speeds above 2.
I used a bright flashlight and a magnifying lens to look at the wheels when it happens. This is a Bachmann 2-8-0 and it gets its power from the tender wheels (you probably already know this), so what I did was set the NCE controller to 1 and let it move ever so slowly through the frog area till it stops.
Then I turn the knob on the CAB to zero but leave the loco’s headlight on as this ONLY happens going forward, not reverse.
It will stop every time. So I took my needle file and moved the forward truck around till the headlight would come on and go off.
It looks like when the rear set of tender wheels are between the insulated part of the frog the forward set somehow doesn’t make good enough contact. If I wiggle them slightly the light goes on and off.
Two other locos are fine at the same speed, a Baldwin VO-1000 and a U23B. It’s just this Bachman and only at this one turnout, the non-diverging part.
I was thinking about adding feeder wires to the turnout but I don’t want a short. But then again if I add feeder wires to the track what difference would it make because it WILL pick up electrical power when wiggled.
I filed down the frog base but that didn’t help. I made SURE everything was spotless so nothing would impede current flow.
First thing I would do is to take a VOM meter, and check to see if there is a circuit here when the probes of the meter is barely touching the rails. If not, then I suspect that the metal jumpers underneath the rails have become unattached to the rails on one or both of the jumpers.
The solution then is to either temporarily remove the turnout, turn it over and determine which jumper is loose and repair it. If it can’t be removed, then just run some feeders to the rails. Your problem sounds just like there is a loss of power across the jumpers, but when the rail is pressed down a little, power is restored as the jumpers are now making contact on the underside of the rails again.