My problem with the Atlas 60' passenger cars running thru Ross turnouts and my fix

Nice solution. Thanks for the tips.   Joe

99 Ross turnouts! Yeah, I could see why your first thought was to modify the cars and not the switches.

That must be some track plan!

Excellent !    

Ingenious solution as it would be surprising that a Ross switch would not perform perfectly. I've tried other brands but Ross is always trouble free and work flawlessly. They are the best.

My Weaver caboose has this same setup and the same issue.  I will see if your fix will work for my caboose. 

I wouldn't blame Ross switches for this.  Frankly I think this design for power pickup is of poor design.   Also Atlas doesn't have any Ross switches?   I find that odd that Atlas would have one of the more common switch types for testing.  sad.

My Atlas O 60-foot cars do not smoothly traverse my Atlas O-54 turnouts, although I haven't had any derailments. I also think that the trucks don't pivot smoothly. Haven't taken action yet but don't run the cars often. They are nice scale models with satisfactory detail.

MELGAR

Great solution and great trouble shooting, too.

I am always suspicious of the vertical travel-type pickups, especially with a lot of side play. The ones that have a swing arm on them always seem better to me, with the exception of the ones that K-line put on some of their locos that could travel almost half an inch past the height of the rail.

Gary,

I think this is a cure for any of this type of pick-up were the problem exists. The only variation might be the thickness of the shim limiting the downward travel of the assembly. Need to make sure that the roller has good contact with the rail. You may need a thicker or thinner shim depending on the length of the pick-up arms that the roller attaches too. The spring compression should help it stay in contact.

Well, your input couldn’t have been better timed. I picked up an Atlas bay window caboose this week and it exhibited the same problem as you described. (The big difference is that my home layout is only 3-by-8 feet and only has one turnout, a vintage Lionel O-27 one.)

I’ll try the caboose out at the club layout, which uses primarily GarGraves switches, just to see if the problem recurs there. But I’ll try making a shim regardless.

By the way, your quick how-to information complete with photos was very helpful. You might want to consider submitting it for print publication to Allan at OGR.

Very good report and how you fixed it, simple but effective. My only question is why did Atlas not catch this in the design stage, or at lest during the manufacturing process? 

This is not good for an high end product line. If your product wont work through a Ross switch you need to go back to HO!

I’ve just put a large commuter fleet of these Trainman 60 footers into service, and am having the same problem on a few Ross switches on the layout.  I will try this fix.  Meanwhile, would like to know if others have found any refinements to the solution above?  Critical issue for my personal C&NW commuter service!

Thanks Al.

Great Tip!

I had this problem with my 2 Atlas 60' coaches last year with one Ross switch on our club modular layout.  The points end of the switch led into a curve. They passed over the other Ross switches on the layout fine (these were on straight track).  As we were doing a show, I did not have time to troubleshoot, so I just pulled them out of service.

BTW, they run fine with my Atlas track at home.

Bob

MELGAR posted:

My Atlas O 60-foot cars do not smoothly traverse my Atlas O-54 turnouts, although I haven't had any derailments. I also think that the trucks don't pivot smoothly. Haven't taken action yet but don't run the cars often. They are nice scale models with satisfactory detail.

MELGAR

Same problem I had on 054 curves...

You need to add a washer to the bolster. Also, either grind down the plastic on the underside or apply tape with oil so when the trucks swing, they slide over the plastic obstruction. See all the areas that scrape markings appear on the body. The wheels and long coupler arms scrape against the underside.

I also added metal weight's as the cars were made to light IMO.

Nice looking models but they contain faulty design oversites. 

I had trouble with the Trainman cars......on Atlas switches......these pics are from 2012. The steps would trip the switch on 045 switches......not on 054 or O72.

I also included comparisons with Lionel (scale) and MTH (Premier) passenger cars.

I tried a fix by adding a spacer between the trucks and the body, but it just wasn't very good. I ended up avoiding switches where I could.

My problem was solved when I switched to DZ1000s (A problem I caused when I didn't phase my transformers correctly.....I burnt out the Atlas switch motors).

SIRT posted:

MELGAR posted:

My Atlas O 60-foot cars do not smoothly traverse my Atlas O-54 turnouts, although I haven't had any derailments. I also think that the trucks don't pivot smoothly. Haven't taken action yet but don't run the cars often. They are nice scale models with satisfactory detail.

MELGAR

Same problem I had on 054 curves...

You need to add a washer to the bolster. Also, either grind down the plastic on the underside or apply tape with oil so when the trucks swing, they slide over the plastic obstruction. See all the areas that scrape markings appear on the body. The wheels and long coupler arms scrape against the underside.

I also added metal weight's as the cars were made to light IMO.

Nice looking models but they contain faulty design oversites. 

 

 

 

 

I had the same issue with the wheel flanges on my 60' Atlas cars catching on the underside detail going through Ross 054 and 042 switches. I added a washer like you did but instead of oiled tape I just cut the offending floor detail off the car. You can't see that it's missing with the car on the track, and the cars no longer derail.

Lou - easy fix for trouble free operation.

Never have any issues with Gargraves manual switches, just the curve operation with T-Man passenger cars.

Thanks for all of above additions.  Here is what I think I have learned in 2 days.  First I made 1/16" shims for the roller assemblies as detailed by CCN in the initial post of this thread.  This fixed the Ross switch issue and reduced, but did not eliminate derailments.  Adding an ordinary hardware store 1/4" flat washer, exactly 1/16" thick, as a shim/lift between car and truck bolster, was the second fix.  This provides enough clearance from underbody to truck and coupler that there are no more "snag" derailments on curves.  The final notes; (a) after tying couplers closed as necessary for trains over about 3 cars, the air hose glad hands got pushed down just enough, and are just stiff enough, that they started causing snag derailments on switches, so I clipped of about 3/32" from each to prevent that, and (b) about choice of diaphragms: I have about 34" as the minimum radius for my lines.  I tried the long "2 rail" diaphragms, and found even with these curves (I have no reverse curve issues) they snagged each other and caused derailments.  Putting the shorter diaphragm on one end of each car (always facing the Chicago passenger terminal, since cars are not turned, only steam locos, in commuter service) solved this last issue and still keeps not much gap between diaphragms.  Have run a 3 car train multiple laps in both directions, and no derailments at all, with all of these fixes in place.   They now are giving the joy paid for at the get-go.

It looks like these cars were designed with 2 rail, small flanges, and wide radii in mind, and we are now finishing Atlas's development work for the 3 rail application.  "Ready to run" has a couple of asterisks, again!  Atlas could earn points by putting a short technical article about these fixes in their customer newsletter.

I still can't find anything kind to say about the roller assemblies, at all, even though the band-aid works so far.  I plan to see if K Line single sprung rollers, used on their streamlined cars, can be found.  With a small plastic plate added for wider base on the location where the roller assembly was originally, I think these will work.  More later on that.

Don

P.S.: Adding the washer shim makes the truck retaining screw now bottom on the truck bolster instead of its raised hole, if tightened.  There seems enough friction in the plastic female threads that one can bring the screw down to just the point before it restricts rotation, and it won't want to turn itself out and loosen.  A micro drop of the plastic-safe Loctite may be a good addition once all the tuning is done.

cnwdon posted:

P.S.: Adding the washer shim makes the truck retaining screw now bottom on the truck bolster instead of its raised hole, if tightened.  There seems enough friction in the plastic female threads that one can bring the screw down to just the point before it restricts rotation, and it won't want to turn itself out and loosen.  A micro drop of the plastic-safe Loctite may be a good addition once all the tuning is done.

I solved that issue by putting a little dab of white lithium grease under the screw head. That allowed the truck to rotate freely with the screw tightened all the way down. 

I had my cars derail on K-line Super snap 0-42 turnouts on the portable club layout, however with the club having ross turnouts also I will need to do these fixes to my cars also, I may draw up some 3-d cad models and upload them to Shapeways as a kit.