Short loco on long turnout

[Terry Toenges]

I was having trouble with one of my E-Z Track turnouts. It was a #4 right. I was running a Rivarossi 2-4-0 and it was doing a hippety-hop over the frog. I pushed it by hand to see exactly where it screwing up. It seems the grooves in the metal frog were too shallow. It occurs to me that maybe the Rivarossi flanges are deeper. It's a new/old loco.
It was also stalling on the turnout unless I kept it going fast. I didn't have any trouble with the standard turnouts with plastic frogs. I had a #5 left that I wasn't using so I had to do some reconfiguring to use that to replace the #4. The 2-4-0 still rises up a little going over the #5 but not as much as the #4. The stalling was still a problem.
This loco I just got recently. Many years ago, I bought an old Pocher 2-4-0 with the motor in the tender. I only got it because it was "Kansas City St. Louis and Chicago Railroad". I got the passenger cars back then, too.
When I recently got the old one out it was missing the drive shaft. I set it on the track and the motor wasn't turning anyway. (I wanted to have a KCSTL&C set to run because I'm a St. Louie guy and there aren't any other St. Louis anythings out there.)
I found a KCSTL&C 2-4-0 on Ebay but it was a newer one with the motor in the loco and no driveshaft needed. The old one had tender pick ups for one side of the track and the other side was loco pickup. The tender had four insulated wheel sets. The new loco only had loco pickups on both sides of the drivers and nothing in the tender.
I put my idea cap on and got out a set of two-wire connectors I had laying around. I took the motor out of the old tender and soldered wires to the pickups. I turned one of the trucks around so each truck would pick up a different rail. I took the body off the loco and soldered connector wires to those pick ups.
I put it all back together and it works great. I now have both tender and loco pick ups. I can slow crawl over turnouts without a problem. I got rid of the horn hook couplers and put a knuckler coupler on the loco and some long McHenry couplers on the cars. I'm happy everything worked out.
In the video, you can see it rise up and down going over the #5 turnout, too. It's the turnout on the outside loop closest to the camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHlbIuiVNjg

[jward]

ave you considered deepening the flangeways on the frog? A standard hacksaw blade is just the right width for the NMRA flangeway specs. I'd guess a couple passes of the blade through the frog would remove enough material that your locomotive wouldn't bounce anymore.

[Terry Toenges]

I do intend to deepen it. I was going to run a file through it but a hack saw blade sounds good too.
Something is going on in the back of the layout, also, on one of my crossovers. One of my Bachmann F-7s keeps wanting to derail somewhere on it. Everything else goes through it ok. The F-7 doesn't have a problem anywhere else. I haven't rolled the layout out yet and got down close to see where that is happening. I just don't know what is up with that since it is the only one that does it and it doesn't do it anywhere else. It didn't have problem with the #4 like the 2-4-0 did but I know the Bachmann loco doesn't have oversize flanges.

[jward]

Is it always the same wheel that derails?

[Terry Toenges]

I haven't gotten a closer look at it yet. I have to pull the layout out to get behind it. I've been working on an expansion on my wing so I had part of the track apart and wasn't running anything.
After I put the turnouts in, I put the plan in "Anyrail" so I could make it right without fudging on connections in places and keep the "S" turns workable. In order to make it right I had to add some length to my "wing".

[Terry Toenges]

I worked on the frog yesterday and got it filed down. I used small flat files (straight and pointed) and a razor saw. When I started to file it, the file got stuck and ended up pulling the whole frog up. That actually made it easier because I could work on it at the table. It took quite a while because I would take some off and then go reinstall it to check it. Then take it off and repeat the whole process a few times. I had my bobber sitting there next to the track and tried it and found it was even rising up so it wasn't just the flanges on the 4-4-0 that were having a problem. The top of the frog was high so I had to file it down. I'm glad I don't have to do this on all my turnouts.

[Trainman203]

I have 10 Bachmann no. 5 switches with the same metal frog.  All of them were too high and had to be ground down to level with the adjacent rail with a Dremel.  The point rail pivots are not well secured either.  They can let go with little provocation. These otherwise nice switches need redesign and better quality control.

[Terry Toenges]

I agree with everything you say. I bought the second #5 because of problems with the first one. I thought maybe it was just one bad one. I see now it wasn't just the one.

[Terry Toenges]

I went over the frog with some extra fine emery cloth to get the scratches off the rails from filing it down. I used some red Loctite on it to seat it back into position. The 2-4-0 go over it just fine now without the hippety-hop. The only thing is, now I have this real shiny silver frog sitting amongst the not so silver or shiny rails on the rest of the turnout.
I have to take a closer look at one crossover in the back now. A couple of times, one of the F7's just toppled over when it came to it. It would go around the oval just fine for a number of laps and then just come to an abrupt halt and fall off the layout there. It's the only loco that did that and it has done it a few times.
I have to move the layout out away from the wall and get down on the floor close to it with a light so I watch it and see what's happening. I was running the A-B-A set. When I turned them around, the other F7 didn't do it. I did bend the glad hand up some.

[Trainman203]

I don't think a too-shallow frog flangeway depth was causing the 2-4-0 hippity-hop, but rather the frog being higher than the 4 points of adjacent rail contact.  It happened on all of my Bachmann no. 5's.  Since they were already in place, I had to grind the frog surface down to rail level with a dremel motor tool.  Then had to smooth it out.  No more hip hopping after that, but the frog "was" shiny.  Since I paint my track, the guard rail parts were minimized, and after a few years have passed, the rest has acceptably dulled down.

In my case, my steam engines would climb on top of the non powered frog, break electrical contact with the adjacent rail, and stall.  Powering the frog with the little lead wire provided by Bachmann helped, but the hippity hopping still looked ridiculous and had to be fixed.

[Terry Toenges]

It could have been a combination of both. I read on another forum that the Pocher/Rivarossi flanges are "deeper" or "larger" than those made by other companies.
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http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/88843.aspx
"The main problem with the older Rivarossi and Pocher 4-4-0 models is their deep, European wheel flanges, which won't go through an Atlas turnout without stalling on the frog."
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http://www.ottgalleries.com/rivarossi.html
"...They run rough, are not quite to scale, and most of the early ones have oversized European flanges, unusable on anything approaching scale-sized track..."

[Terry Toenges]

Thank you for the reminder. I had totally forgotten about that little wire underneath. I had it connected on the old #5 but didn't think about it on the new one. I just connected it. The 2-4-0 goes through even better now.

[Terry Toenges]

Now that I know the issues with the #5's and how to fix them, I'll go back to my first #5 and fix that one too.  I already went back to Anyrail and reworked the plan to incorporate both #5's. By doing that, I was also able to put the #4 back in. That way, I only have one standard turnout (for now). I'll probably have to use a standard one when I add in the turntable because there are only a few places on the inside loop where I can a turnout to get to the turntable.

[Terry Toenges]

I guess sometimes I just can't win. I worked on the original #5 left turnout that I had replaced.  I filed the frog down and replaced the new one with this old one. I got it to where the 2-4-0 goes through it just fine every time.
The trouble: I just got a Bachmann old time Santa Fe HO DCC 4-4-0 in the mail today (To go with my Santa Fe Overton passenger cars that I've had forever). I tried it on the old #5 and it derails every time on the diverging leg. It does ok on the straight leg. The pivoting rails seem pretty loose, too on this old one. (I say "old" because I've had it for quite a while while I collected the pieces I was going to use. I never used it until just recently.)  I guess this one just wasn't meant to be used. :-(

[Len]

Terry,

Before I got into repairing trains as a business, I had similar problems with loose rivets on switches from another company. I managed to tighten them using punches and anvils from my leather working 'toolbox' very similar to these:
https://www.amazon.com/Tandy-Leather-Snap-All-Setter-8108-10/dp/B003A64ASE/ref=sr_1_28?keywords=snap+setter&qid=1580386085&s=arts-crafts&sr=1-28

You'll have to pull whatever's underneath to put something in place to support the bottom of the rivet. Then select a punch that fits the top of the rivet as close as possible, Tap the punch carefully with a light hammer until the rivet is snug, but not binding the point rail.

When I started doing repairs for other people, I got one of these, along with some extra rivet and grommet tips. It made doing things like tightening point rail rivets a lot simpler:
https://www.mcssl.com/store/carlstoytrains/brakemans-o-gauge-starter-set

Len