New Railking SW-1 derails on Atlas O-54 switches

At one time Atlas turnouts (switches) came with a small plastic piece that was to be installed at the frog, to smooooth the transition.   Sometimes the wheel sets are two wide and need adjustment, which can be difficult.

Sometimes it is the pickup roller that doesn’t clear the gap between the third rail and the converging rail. I have a couple of engines that have this problem. The pickup roller gets caught and forces the engine to derail.

Does the engine experience the same problem running forward through that switch?

My solution to this problem is to glue a short extension to the third rail parallel to the converging rail that “carries” the problem roller over the gap.

The derailing problem is solved! I reduced the gauge of the front & rear wheel sets by 1/2 mm. Now my SW-1 tracks beautifully in both directions through Atlas O-54 and O-72 switches.

To accomplish this, I removed the truck sides, padded the outside face of the wheels with cardboard, and VERY CAUTIOUSLY  squeezed the wheel sets in a vice. The process involved small squeezes in the vice followed by measurements away from the vice, over and over again until the 1/2 mm reduction was done. It was helpful that this process never required the removal of the trucks or wheel sets from the locomotive.

Note that my choice of a 1/2 mm gauge reduction was to match the distance between the flanges on my MTH Premier GP40 from a couple of years ago. That engine has always tracked well through all of my Atlas O switches.