Hello, everyone again,
I have probably a stupid, but hopefully answerable question. I have all atlas manual/automatic turnouts, and i have about a front stretch of about 4 of them, being in n scale i know how touchy things can be, but ive noticed that all of my cars seem to wobble eveytime they go over a turnout, im kind of a perfection freak and this wobbling drives me nuts, it maks me think that there going to derail, and the end up not, does anyone know how to fix this/ or is it something uncontrollable?
i’m using atlas #4’s and 6’s on my layout and find that some of my cars do that too. those cars sometimes derail when the flange of the wheel hits the open point. i had the same thing when i was modeling in ho. i had to glue a small piece of rail ahead of the open point to act as a guard rail and keep the flange from hitting the point. try carefully to bend the open point a little bit wider. if you have ballasted your track make sure that there are no stray pieces of the ballast in the flangeways of the frog and guard rails.
Are they wobbling over the frog? The frog rails are supposed to support the wheel all the way – the wing rails keep it up until it meets the point. If the gap there is too big, the wheel drops into it and you get the wobble.
If all the wheel flanges are the same depth, they can be carried by the bottom of the frog, but there are too many variations for that to be reliable.
You can test this by watching a wheel go through the frog.
I’ve been having that same problem with my Atlas HO #4’s. However, EVERY wheelset that wobbles, when checked for proper gauge, is TOO TIGHT in back to back! It’s not the turnout, it’s the wheels! Might be the same thing for you. Check your wheels with an NMRA gauge. You might find a surprise.
–Randy
I’ve noticed this problem in Atlas HO-scale turnouts, too, so it’s not a problem with only N-scale. The only real solution to this problem is, use a better quality turnout, such as a Peco or Shinohara. Atlas turnout frogs have too much open space in them that allow wheels to drop down as rolling stock goes through them. Peco and Shinohara have closer tolerances and are a much higher quality product.
By carefully pushing just a single wheelset through turnouts where this problem occurs, I can clearly see that the wheel is riding UP not falling down. Most of my rolling stock has been converted to Proto2000 wheelsets, and none of those bounce, wiggle, or wobble over Atlas turnouts. Athearn wheelsets, about 1 in 10 does it, and those are definitely out of gauge. A little twisting to get them to matc the gauge and they roll through without any bumps of wiggles. By far the worstoffenders are IHC passenger car wheelsets. They are a split design sort of like Athearn loco wheels, and always seem to come with the two halves pressed tightly together. And they always bump over the turnouts. Well, they too need to be spread slightly to match the NMRA gauge, and once done, work just fine with no bouncing. The only thing that will not negotiate the Code 83 turnouts is OLD Rivarossi with the HUGE flanges - late 60’s to early 70’s stuff, but those will not likely run on ANY brand Code 83, the flange it too high.
People constantly disparage Atlas track. Sorry, there is nothing wrong with it, and at 1/3 the cost of most of the alternatives, over a large layout with more than 100 turnouts, it makes a HUGE difference in wether I enjoy a HOBBY or just have a toy train loop.
–Randy
When I have a problem with cars at turnouts, the first thing I do is check the gage on the wheels, almost all the time the gage is to small, ie: the wheels are to close together. I just purchased a Kato business car and for $50.00 I still had to regage one truck.
So far the Kadee and Jaybee wheel sets have never been out of gage. Almost everyone of my Genesis units had the wheels out of gage but, I replaced them with NWSL wheel sets so it didn’t matter.
Bob
You might check the closure rail. On Atlas turnouts they sometimes are slightly higher then the stock rail. Filing helps. I use mostly Peco but recently found serveral Peco turnouts the clorsure rail was very slightly out of alignment with the frog. Again filing helped. Also a check of the wheel sets with a gage is very important.
Model cars ‘wobble’. Prototype cars ‘wave’, but don’t wobble.
It’s the same thing, but the frequency is different
Having one truck loose and tightening the other changes the frequency. It’s called “Triangulation”. Trick is tightening the one truck just enough without binding it’s lateral motion., while the other stay loose.
Your turnouts produce ‘bounce’ (gap in track). Your car turns bounce into wobble.