I'm sitting here playing: swapping out couplers, running locos on my desktop loops, taking notes as to what locos can handle what radii and turnouts. Just enjoying a quiet evening. My new Athearn 2-8-0 randomly turns right coming through my 15 deg crossing from the angled side. It's coming out of a 481 15 deg curve. I give it a push and the whole loco can follow the new path without derailment. I see no visible front truch or crossover issue. I'm running it the other way to see if it happens from that direction (hopefully that will tell me train or track).
Well this on the otherhand is not quite so reassuring, lmao. I too have plans for a 15 degree crossing after a curve. Keep us informed.
Have you checked wheel gauge? Many (maybe even most) N scale locomotives come out of the box with the wheels undergauge. This lets them run on sharper curves without binding, but can cause the wheels to bang guardrails and/or frogs at turnouts and crossings as the wheelset slops around between the rails.
There are many possible reasons why that happens. I found that I have to look for 3 issues: 1) Out-of-gauge axles. I check with a NMRA gauge first. 2) Uneven trackwork. I always have derailments of the 100-ton grain hoppers on the least reachable (where else?) turnout. I could not find the reason until I checked if the track was even. And, what did I see? A small dimple in the outside rail opposite the frog which causes certain wheels to lift off that rail, but only if the distance between trucks has a certain value. 3) The combination of the curve and the crossing. The curve forces the flanges to the outside rail. That might be enough to cause the wheels to follow the diverging route. Now that is really hard to correct, maybe a guardrail next to the inner rail like you see on bridges. I hope this helps you. Michael
THe 15 deg is adjacest to an R19 15 deg. I have the MTL multitool that I use for gauge. They look perfect. Is there a better tool? Might be trackwork. It's Unitrack, but its free floating on the table. I may have had it out of alignment. Will play tonight.
It shouldn't be happening with Unitrack. It is pretty much bulletproof. I would venture a guess as to wheels not being in gauge. BTW- Is there a vertical dip in the track anywhere near the problem?
If there is no tangent track between the end of curve and that crossing, then I'd assign at least part of it to lacking that tangent. Likely the physics of transitioning from one to another are somehow involved. Boxcab E50
I just had to rip up, smooth down, fill in, regrade, sand, etc., a three foot section which included a turnout because of a dip. The good news is that I now know how to put sandpaper into a sanding block and that I properly soldered the tracks going into flextrack so that I have current to the old and newly installed area.
There is an ugly sheet of plywood on my desk. I'm the only dip in the room, much less near the track. Is there a different gauge tool other than the MTL coupler height gauge with the grooves in the side? If not the wheels are good. It happened coming out of the R715 15 deg as well just now. I'm gonna swap out the loco for a athearn 2-6-0 and see what happens
I love the Athearn 2-8-0 and 2-6-0 locos, but on the 2-8-0 especially with the 2 middle drivers being blind, the loco is able to twist on the track when the front set of drivers is allowd to "wander" like they would at a crossing or switch for that matter. The 2 guide wheels up front aren't heavy enough to actually do any guiding and tend to flop around a lot when going over crossings and switches. I've had my 2-8-0's do weird things at crossovers and switches, but it's fairly rare. http://www.youtube.com/user/AtomicVetteZ51#p/u/4/3l5TeGleYbY
I'd check the track. I bought my wife a Bachman Spectrum 2-8-0 and after searching and reading a few threads here (and emailing someone who posted) I have a great running locomotive without rapido couplers. Oops... She has a great running locomtive I noticed that above certain speeds, the front wheels jumped out. Wouldn't slow the thing down at all, just made a racket, until it hit the rerailer, where it stopped. Careful study found that in the middle of each piece of curved sectional track, the wheels started to shimmy. I found my NMRA gauge - perfect. I chalked it up to no weight on the wheels. Until I replaced the coupler. I set the coupler height gauge on the track - a straight section, mind you, and it wouldn't sit flush! The gauge dropped right in on a piece of atlas code 80 flex. The rails are too close. Now, granted, it's just an oval of Bachman easy track that gets set up when I want to run-in a locomotive, but the rest of the axles and every train car I have hooked up work flawlessly. So do all my other locomotives. Unitrack quality should be better than Bachman; you're paying a premium for it. But it still would be worth checking.
