Hi Jess,
I hear your frustration - intermittent derailments are a pain! Here’s another thought. You built this RR a while ago and now it is summer. Do you live in a place with high humidity? One RR I built in winter had to be adjusted quite a bit the first summer due to expansion of my base which caused the rails to buckle. It was quite noticeable, but maybe you have that to a lesser degree.
The advice to check with a guage should catch this.
Cheers,
Bryan
Jess,
I just reviewed your photos - that’s a layout my kids would go NUTS over! looks like a ton of fun. After looking though, I’d pay close attention to the comments about turn radius and wheelsets hitting the underframes. You say you have 4x8 and I see a pretty good spacing between inner and outer lines. This leads me to assume you are under 18" radius on your inner loop and that can deliver some grief for sure if the truck can not rotate and align with the track.
I hope this helps - gotta keep the kids engaged!
Bryan
Well I must have answered this in another forum here so I’ll have too repost my responce here:
Ok, I promised that I’d post the reason(s) my cars were derailing and all most everyone who replied to my desperate cries from the deep dark layout were correct, it wasn’t one problem but a mixed bag of problems.
Since I couldn’t be by the speed controller and watch the wheels close up at the same time I had my wife run the trains around as I used a zoom on my video camera to tape the wheels as they made their way around the tracks then I could play the run back, fix a problem and then on to the next derailment.
A) On one of the track joints the tie was indeed nailed down too much causing the ones before and after it to pop up and it was on a corner so that made it worst.
B) On another joint I had missed one of the joiners and did not assemble it right it was sitting under one rail causing it not to have a correct current when the track section moved up and down on that end, also I missed a track spike here.
C) One section was oxidized and under a magnifying glass was pitted all along the insides of the track with this white build up this was a problem section which was replaced.
D) At one point I noticed a small 2-8-0 lift up on a curve and that was because the track was twisted “Out of wacky”.
E) And my personal favorite was the one the furthest away from the controller that was “clipping” the side of my bridge and knocking it off the track but just after leaving the bridge, now I could hear this one clicking when the train would go by but after many inspections of the track there I could find nothing until watching the video.
I want to thank all of you who have helped me with this frustrating problem, too those who answered my plea for help on the board and also too those who PM’d or emailed me, all together I got close to 30 replies all with great suggestions to try.
It took 6 hours to figure this all out and make the co
Greetings wichmannb ,
Yes I agree about kids loving the layout, my two grandsons helped me design a kid friendly layout, they wanted to be able to play with the scenes also so I made them as durable as possibly, they can drive their cars and trucks around the towns roads (I just need to put some track graded cross overs), load and unload the train flat bed cars (not seen in full force) I’ve got about 12 flat cars for hauling stuff, army trucks and dune runners and so on.
They like playing in the quarry with the earth movers and they play on the lake with the jet skis, rafts, boats and so on.
Even with the tight radius on the inside tracks the locos I’m running do fine on those tracks NOW after addressing some issues solved here with the help of everyone, I just can’t run any real fast thats all, the inside tracks were ment as a slower playing train for the younger Grandson because he gets bored easy and the outside one was designed for the older one who likes to run trains full throttel…LOL!
Thanks for the help , Jess Red Horse.
Jess, you did answer it in this forum here. As of this mioment (6:42 am) it’s located on page two.
Jess –
See, that’s why we wanted you to post your results. Great idea with the video camera. I can’t believe I never thought of it myself, because I’m always screwing around with mine.
Congrats on solving your problems. May you have many years of trouble-free operation.