Figure 8 layout

[Len]

If you have a loose freight truck, roll it through the crossing with a little down pressure. See if the wheels are falling into the gap between the 'diamond' and stock rails. Or trying to turn like it's on a switch. It's the places to the left and right of the area circled in red:



I had that problem with an HO 30deg crossing. Closing the gaps up with a bit of styrene cured the problem.

Len

[DougInCal]

I visited a couple of model shops today.  The first suggested adding weight to my cars, but they didn't have any of the "tire weights" in stock.  When I went to the second R/R model shop, they came up with the same suggestion.

The weights with adhesive backing come in .25 oz (I think it is oz) squares and they suggested cutting them in half for the N scale.  I removed the "coal" from my coal car and placed a .25 weight in front (next to the loco) and that has seemed to fix the problem, running in both directions.  I haven't yet tried it with the half-size, but will do that tomorrow.

It appears that the problem is that when the loco goes across the crossover, it bounces enough to derail the following car.  I have not added weight to any of the other cars, so I guess it just needed the extra weight on the coupler to the loco to stabilize it.

This store, while 25 miles away, is strictly R/R so they have a lot of goodies.  An ATLAS 40000388 N Scale GP40 Diesel Locomotive (Western Pacific 3532) caught my eye, so that is currently running on my fig 8.

I was experiencing some slowdowns and so I tried my 70% isopropyl wipes, and they did a good job.  I think I will break out my two HO sets and clean the tracks.  If they work as well, then I will probably run those two large ovals around the fig 8.  Hey, I paid for them, I might as well use them.  'Course that means some kind of table large enough to hold them.  I guess it never ends ...