I have thought about what you are reporting. If your wheels are in gauge, and if the turnout is in gauge, and if it is an insulfrog turnout (DCC friendly, power routing), it can be one of two things:
a. your joins at the ends of the turnouts are not “good” enough to maintain track power as this one locomotive, for whatever reason (weight, driver base length) traverses the join. The joiner is too loose; or
b. the points rails get power only from contact with the stock rails, and when this one loco gets over and past the frog, the turnout is allowing the point rail to move slightly and to break contact with the stock rail. It might be a flotation/support on the roadbed problem for the entire turnout, it might be wobbly point pivots, sagging middle of the turnout due to support at the middle under the frog, …
I had a turnout with problem B. One thing I do now when I build track is lay a straight edge long the rail head through turnouts and make sure I don’t have any high spots or dips. I also go side-to-side to ensure I don’t have it leaning with one rail much higher than the other. The point about insulfrogs is equally important.
You mention the brand of locomotives, but not the turnout brand. This could be very significant, especially if they are Atlas Snap Track or other cheap turnouts.
Loose rivets where the point rails swivel on Atlas turnouts can cause the exact problem that you’re encountering due to the weight of the locomotive causing the point rail to move away from the stock rail, thus losing electrical contact.
I have had to use the point of a 10 penny nail and a gentle tap with a hammer to spread the head of Atlas turnout rivets to solve this problem.
Ah…a subject near and dear to my heart. First a little history: the Sweethaven Harbor division of the Central New England Railway is a fold-down switching layout. By switching layout I mean a lot of switches (19). I started operation on the S.H. using a Proto 2000 SW8 locomotive. The darn thing did exactly what your engine seems to be doing. I cleaned the locomotive wheels, polished the track until I could see my face in it (not a good thing by the way), even changed the wheelset having a traction tire for one that didn’t…all with no lasting solution. A fellow modeler suggested that I take a piece of 600 grit sandpaper and sand the edges of the stock and point rails where they met…better - but not great. Finally I published my situation on this forum for the world to ponder - and ponder they did. Over and over again, I was advised to solder jumper wires from the point rails, through the roadbed to my bus leads. I had nothing to lose -but time- so I tried it. VOILA!!! It worked! Here’s what you need to do: drill a small hole under each of your point rails on your turnouts (I use Walthers Code 83 DCC friendly turnouts), solder a piece of stranded 24 gauge wire to the outside of each point rail (stranded because it bends easier when the point rails move). The jumpers want to be near, but not on, the swivel joint (I count the space between the ties containing the throwbar as “1” and then at the 10th space I drill my holes and solder the wires). Now the tricky part: solder the jumpers to the bus feed being careful to maintain continuity (+ with + and - with -) - or there will be a short. That’s it. There isn’t an easier answer. I think you will see that your DCC locos will cruise through your switches (my Atlas MP15DC acts as if they aren’t there). If you follow my advice, the only dead spot you will have, on the turnout, is the insulated frog (easily bridged by your locomotive).
Oh, I mentioned that I have 19 switches on the layout? Well, so far I have only "
I’m thinking (with a three second pause) you’re shorting on the turnout, and the DCC system is resetting. If there is another loco running does it stop, too? As has been said, more info on the turnouts would be useful.
I use Kato Unitrack and if the engine is “Caught” on the wrong side when it’s thrown it will be killed. Otherwise the engines dont even notice the power routing. Some turnouts are all live and no need to worry about this.
I second the soldering of the point rails very near the Joint as a possible solution.
I would be curious as to reasons for that also. I too have a Broadway Limited loco, sw1500, that seems to hesitate at the beginnings and sometimes ends of turnouts. No other locos do that, so I concluded that it was in the loco, not the track, as I did the cleaning thing also.
In relative terms that’s a little guy. So, if the frog isn’t powered, and there is even a little bit of dirst on track or wheels, or maybe a tiny, even nearly impercepible uneveness in the height of the railheads, or a little bump (you get the idea), you have a chance to lose power, especially at low speed.
I had a similar problem with my Broadway Limited locomotive. I use the Easy DCC system and apparently the QSI decoder in the locomotive for CV11 is set at the factory so the packet timeout causes the locomotive to stall or turn on and off. I re-programmed CV11 to a value of 0 which disables the timeout packet and now the loco runs fine. However, my loco was stalling where ever, not just on the turnout points, so this may or may not work for you.
This type of turnout?:http://www.atlasrr.com/Images/Track/Trackphotos/506.JPG
If so have you run power to the frog? We had this issue with the Atlas turnouts at the club. Surprisingly it was the 6 axle locomotives that stalled. It seems there was a bow in the track so the loco would teeter-totter on the center axle on the frog and loose connectivity. We put power to the frogs and the problem went away.
First - will everyone please read the original post? He clearly stated HO, Atlas code 83 turnouts. Yet numerous posts said “what brand of turnout?” and “what gauge?” Grrrrr.
Now my question: When the engine stops, what happens to the rest of the layout? Put another engine somewhere, anywhere connected to the same power district, and turn on the headlight. Leave that engine stopped with the light on. When the questionable engine stops on the turnout, what happens to the headlight? If it stays on, then the engine on the turnout is just losing power. If it goes out, and then comes back on when the other engine does, then you’ve got a momentary short that’s kicking out a breaker. The breaker resets after a couple of seconds, and by that time the short has cleared.
Do the problem engines have traction tires? That basically takes an axle out of the power loop, and makes it much more likely that you’ll lose power.
