Hi Folks, this may have been previously discussed, but I'm still looking for an answer. My 2426W tender coupler randomly opens when going over some of my Fastrack switches. It seems like the shoe is too close to the track. I took it apart and there's little fingers that are pushing the sliding shoe down I'm concerned if I bend them to try and get the shoe to retract upwards it will still be down too low because of plain old gravity. Has anyone else had something like this happen?
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Modern track systems were not designed with sliding shoes in mind,your shoe is picking up the power rail in the switch,you can put a piece of tape on the metal on the pickup and solve the problem.
mikey
Same thing happened to me when I run postwar cars with coil couplers, every once in a while one shoe will hit the middle rail on the switch just right and open the coupler. Just like Mikey suggested I put a piece of tape on the shoes and haven't had any problems since.
I bought a bag of dental brace rubber bands, colored them black and no more issues. Someone here on the forum suggested it.
Thanks for the info and as Mikey said I have a piece of tape over the shoe. I thought I might be able to get the shoe to sit closer to the underside of the truck somehow.
Good deal, that sounds good for the tender. I had a dump car doing it and I wanted the dump to work so the tape was not an option for me.
Raising the shoe up higher I believe is the better option than tape. I've used thin black cable ties to do this. Dental bands sound good to, but they're more likely to fail over time.
The problem with the shoe being lower is that the shoe will still hit the power rail that opens it. I have found on infrequent occasions the rail damages the shoe, and I've had to replace them. Unless you have the right rivet press this this near impossible to do. Even with the rivet press it's a tricky job. And who wants a job anyway.
Alan
The problem is the rivet which activates the coupler hits the power rail. As shoes wear with age it can occur on old Lionel switches as well as modern switches. The solution I use is to file the rivet flush or almost flush with the shoe. That leaves enough metal to hold the shoe and allow contact with RCS activation rails so the coupler and activation features still work. I have been doing this for years and never had a shoe come off. This can be done with a round hand file or a rotary tool with cutting disk is much faster.
I agree with Dave that the head of the rivet is too close to the top of the runners on the accessory shoe. Another cause of this problem is improperly made reproduction parts. There is a spot face in the shoe that the head of the rivet should sit in. Some of the reproduction shoes have this spotface too small in diameter or too shallow. Some of the after market rivets have heads that too large in diameter to fit into the spot face. When replacing the accessory shoe check that the rivet head fits into the spotface and protrudes only a small distance into the gap where the accessory rail should run.
Thanks for all the info everyone. I'm going to work on it this week.
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