Drat, I don't see a way to edit a typo. The strip I'm using is .02 x .04. It fills the space precisely. If anyone is interested I can post photos. I should mention that I realize the wheel flanges are not supposed to ride on anything. That's just unavoidable in this situation. I've continued to 'fix' more turnouts and everything is so much smoother afterwards. Between this fix and getting rid of the slinky bobblehead couplers, my N scale experience has been greatly enhanced.
Yikes! I'm going to eat my engineer's hat on this one. This fix seemed to be going very well until I ran a couple of locos with larger wheel flanges and what seems to be unforgiving suspension. I don't want anyone else to change a bunch of turnouts and then be stuck with the same problem I'm now having. All my Kato, newer Atlas, and Athearn N scale locos run thru the modified turnouts just fine. But older Atlas, Intermountain, and BLI do not. Their flanges ride up over the styrene and lose contact with the rail. The other truck should continue making contact but does not. That's just odd. I have to spend some time coming up with the best fix. Filing down the styrene will alleviate the problem. I don't know of any .015 styrene strip. .02 strip worked fine for most locos, .01 didn't quite cut it for the little NW2. I don't know why the other truck loses contact with that tiny bit of lift on one truck. Another issue is the depth of that gap at the frog. After measuring several PECO turnouts, both old and new, there is as much as .013 difference. That's a complication I didn't expect. After I work this out I'll post the results, just in case someone is interested.
