Ross Custom Switches & 3rd Rail/Sunset

Fireball RROGR Forum Member

Hi All - As I am getting closer to purchasing track for my layout it looks like Atlas-O curved 72/54 switches are out of stock mostly everywhere that I look. Ross seems to have the same switches in stock at a much better price point but I read the following on their website.

"Can I run scale wheels through your switches?

The scale wheels have very small flanges and miss our low profile guard rail. What we have done for people in the past was to send them guard rails made from our regular height rail. Also scale flange wheels will fall into the frog that are manufactured for tinplate style wheels. This doesn't always result in a derailment but can affect the smoothness of operation."

Can any of you that use Ross switches and are running 3rd Rail locomotives comment on if this is something that I should be concerned about? I have historically used Fastrack so I'm looking forward to using the more realistic Atlas or Ross products but want to understand any pitfalls before jumping in. Thanks everyone.

3/7/2012:50 PM

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gunrunnerjohnOGR Forum Member SUPPORTING MEMBERDIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

If they run on Fastrack, hard to believe they won't run on Ross. Fastrack sure wasn't designed with scale wheels in mind, and I had terrible luck running MTH stuff with scale wheels on Fastrack.

3/7/2012:52 PM

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clem kOGR Forum Member

I have some 2 rail equipment and it seems to work just fine on my Gargraves ,Ross layout. The bumping across the switch does not cause a derailment for the most part. Order the Ross with the higher guard rails, I added a strip of plastic to the top of my guard rails. I would also talk to Steve at Ross about making the frogs out of aluminum for better electrical ground.

PS... I use higher numbered turn outs and larger diameter curves (120).

3/7/201:40 PM

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TrainBubOGR Forum Member

gunrunnerjohn posted:
If they run on Fastrack, hard to believe they won't run on Ross. Fastrack sure wasn't designed with scale wheels in mind, and I had terrible luck running MTH stuff with scale wheels on Fastrack.

Have you tried replacing the scale wheels with “high rail” wheels ? I’ve done this on my one MTH scale pilot diesel. I haven’t run yet but will be on Ross O72 curves with primarily O72 and Curved O96/72 switches. I did this as I read somewhere MTH scale wheels will not navigate thru Ross switches. I will be an experiment. At very worst, the diesel looks very “sweet”