Scaletrax turnout non-derail feature not recommended

P.S. I believe MTH has started shipping newly-manufactured switches (finally!), possibly incorporating some of the Hikel suggested revisions.  I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried them, and exactly what the changes are.

Me too!

Randy,

   I feel your pain and have had similar issues with Lionel engines pickup rollers and some weaver coal hoppers flanges shorting out through my switches. 

The track doesn't like large flanged wheels or wide rollers.  I can't do much about the flanges so I just don't run my few weaver cars.  I thought about using clear nail polish to insulate the spot where they make contact but have not tried that yet.  I've used nail polish before for a similar problem and it works and last a while. 

The Big Boy, MWR 261 and maybe others occasionally spark through the switches because of the rollers.  It seems to be more of a problem in a particular direction.  I think its because the rollers are angled a little to put it in just the right spot to touch both rails.  You can rotate the pickup roller to slightly improve the problem.  But the best solution I found is to use MTH rollers.  The MTH rollers are about the same width but the ends are insulated so that the actual metal pickup part is narrower than Lionels.  I assume this was done for that reason.  They fit nicely for the Lionel engines I tried like the DD35a, but not sure if they will work on all engines.  I bought a bunch at the parts booth at York.  You can probably order them through MTH part if you lucky enough to get a response.  I usually have to email more than once. 

Rich

Hi Rich,

Thanks  very much for this information -- it's very helpful.  The problem is even worse for me than I originally posted -- because this is a new layout and I've only run a few locos and a few types of turnouts.  I have not even laid #4 turnouts yet, so I hope they don't have the same issues.

The latest problem is when I run my Lionel Legacy Big Boy into a converging turnout from the reverse/out position EVEN WHEN THE TURNOUT IS THROWN "OUT."  So this is not limited to the non-derail feature.  The pickup roller on the TENDER this time, shorts and trips my circuit breaker.  It's only a problem when running at very low speed, but I like low speed!

I was able to twist the pickup roller into a slightly different position, which seems to have corrected this specific problem.  But who knows what will happen when running in the other direction etc.

The tender also derailed when running at low speed in reverse, with the switch thrown "out."  Somehow the pickup roller dropped off of the center rail -- perhaps as it entered or came off of the diamond, I'm not certain -- and jammed and everything got pushed off of the rails at that point.  Very discouraging after so much planning and effort.

I would add (for the benefit of others reading this) that it's also critical to check that the points are totally insulated, because in many of my switches I had to remove them and cut them a bit shorter.  And I still have not found a satisfactory "push nut" to replace the ones that have to be cut off.  Ugh.

Thank you for the suggestions of using MTH rollers, and clear nail polish.  I'll contact MTH for the rollers, and maybe they will also sell me some push nuts and also some traction tires (my Legacy A-B-B-A F-unit set had many oversize traction tires which derailed those locos frequently.)

I'm not really clear where you would suggest applying the nail polish.  Would you please give me some specifics?

Thanks Rich!

Randy

P.S. I haven't posted much about it, because there doesn't seem to be much interest here, but this layout (about 15' x 32') is going to be autonomously controlled by Arduinos.  Similar to what Prof. Chaos has done, but I hope to be able to have six or seven trains running at the same time, with no pre-set routes and with all track interconnected.  I've done all kinds of proof-of-concept tests with all of the various hardware interfaces, and using the Legacy (and TMCC) protocol -- it's very fun!  I'd be happy to share ideas with anyone who has similar interests.