On my Christmas layout, I run my older MTH engines. It is basically two loops, with 13 switches. Ever since I had the engines, they have had a connection problem when going slowly over the Realtrax switches....only when doing 1 to 3 miles an hour. They will creep over, then the pickup hits a dead spot - then the other pickup hits a dead spot, and voila, a stuck engine. I jiggle it, it fires up, I shut it down, restart it and move on.
EXCEPT...I have a Railking (all of mine are RK) A-A F3 set that I bought used here on the forum. It never has that problem. BECAUSE.....the other older engines, have a single roller pickup on each truck. This F3 has a twin roller pickup on each truck. I have often wondered what would happen with the other engines if they had twin roller pickups.
So, today, I took one pickup off of the F3 truck, and took a pickup off of the SD9 that I have, an engine that HATES going slow over any of those switches. The pickups interchanged with no problem, no clearance issue, no fighting to put each on the other engine.
I ran the SD9 through a couple of switches at 3 MPH, then 2MPH, then 1 MPH. I ran it over all of the switches, and found two that it did not like to navigate at 1MPH! I can live with that. About the only time I would need to run that slow, is when backing up a log car, or coal car, or milk car, to line them up for unloading. On two of them, a switch is a problem. And of course, the engines decide to die, right when you are doing a demo of the dumping for young guests!
But, it appears that all is good, I will probably leave each engine with a single/dual PU for now. Next I need to test the dual on my other engines, and figure out how many and what size I will need to perhaps renovate some other "slugs" that can't crawl through the switches. I wonder if I ask MTH what two roller pickup they put on the RK F3 engines years ago, if they would know? (If anyone has some extra pickups (dual) I would pay you for them, but MTH may make many different ones, so it would be tough to do that.)
Just thought I would pass this on in case anyone else has issues with connection on turnouts.
Greg
