I am having problems with derailments at two new atlas crossings. They are 19" HO code 83. SOME cards detrail everytime ONLY at these places. There are 12 peco switches and a dual mainline of 76 feet each. It appears that the 'groves' at the frog are not deep enough for some cars. My thought is to use a dremel cut off wheel to make them a tad deeper and see if that helps. I have used track gauges, they are level and straight. Thoughts appreciated. Best regards,
Try using new metal wheels. Sounds like you have the old style deep flange HO scale wheels. These ols style wheels tend to ride on ties also. Mike
I had the same problem with Atlas crossings also. The steel wheels will help or if you want to run the other cars you can carefully make the groove deeper!
Hearing someone else has the same problem is what I wanted to hear. By the way, metal and plastic wheels derail, the worse is a six wheel loco BLI tender. For grins, who makes alternative crossings that work properly? Wonder if Atlas is fixing this problem?
If you have code 83 track and RP25 wheels, there should be no problem. However, maybe there is plastic 'flash' in the frog area(if it is plastic). Whether you have a plastic or metal frog, I would not use the Dremel - not enough control. Get a set of jeweller's files and run them back and forth to clean out frog area. Jim
Diligentman, Welcome to TrainBoard! I suspect your engine and cars have the long European flanges. The easiest fix is going to be to get a small thin saw blade from a local Hobby Shop, or hardware store, and carefully pull the saw blade through the frog by fingers. Let the saw teeth do the work by pulling slowly with one hand, while putting just a bit of down ward pressure with a finger on your other hand. Just enough to make some shavings. Use a truck to roll through the area to tell when you have it down enough to clear the flange. I made a tool to do this by clamping a 2" long piece of saw blade between two blocks of hardwood. I let the front end of the blade just high enough to ride over the new frog's plastic flange groove, and set the rear end down low enough to cut the groove as deep as needed. By pulling this tool through my frogs, I have been able to accurately relieve both sides of all my frogs. Now they will work with the new RP-25 flanges and the long European flanges as well. (I set the depth of the saw by holding it against a wheel and sliding the saw blade down until it touched the wheel tread to get the depth of cut.) If you have any trouble, email me, I'll help.
I guess, you have an NMRA gauge and checked both, crossing and wheels. Sometimes it's a problem with flangeways. Wolfgang
Thanks for the tips! Yes, I have NMRA Gauge and naturally everything checks out within spec. No ballast yet, so that is not a problem. Using a razor saw to deepen the flange paths in the crossings helped a bunch. Again, thanks for your suggestions.
You are welcome Diligentman ! There is no charge for first time solutions. (The next one is a Lulu though!)