My cars becoming uncoupled when traversing switches

[Harvey]

On my garden railroad, I have several Bachmann passenger cars that are uncoupling from the locomotive when traversing switches. At first I thought
it might be just one car, but there are at least five cars that are doing this.
How can I solve this problem?

[Kevin Strong]

Is there something on the switch that's catching the release pin from below? That'd be the first place I'd look. Next, look at what each truck is doing as it goes through the frog. If it's bouncing through the frog, perhaps that's causing the uncoupling. See the "Garden Railways Basics" column in the current (April '07) issue of Garden Railways for tips on how to troubleshoot switch problems.

Later,

K

[Jim Banner]

The older Bachmann LS couplers are sensitive to any track irregularities.  If you cannot fix the track, fix the couplers.  The link below explains one way of doing this.

http://members.shaw.ca/sask.rail/construction/lsbuild/coupler.html

[VirginiaCentral]

Wow, I wish I'd know about this fix before I converted all of my equipment to Kadees! I might not have made the switch!   Oh well, at least the Kadees work well.  I've never had any problems with properly installed Kadee couplers.

[Harvey]

I want to thank all of you that responded to this topic. Thanks for the extremely helpful advice. Upon detailed inspection of the frog, I found a piece of ballast stuckbetween the frog and the diverging rail. This was
keeping the switch from operating correctly. Thanks again!