Will 2 Rail/DCC Engines Run Thru Ross or ScaleTrax Turnouts?

I would think that if you can keep the rails correctly separated electrically you should not have any problems, however the two rail wheels may not stay on track 100% on three rail track.

Gargraves or Ross track has all rails separated electrically, don't know about other brands of track.

Lee Fritz

Thanks, Lee.  Running engines built solely to run on 2 rail track and with DCC on MTH Scaletrax without turnouts is no problem as long as the minimum required radii are maintained.  Works fine.  It's the 3 rail MTH or Ross turnouts that concern me.  Bill

Like you, I'm going with hybrid wiring, so I chose ScaleTrax as for the planned layout.

The ScaleTrax turnouts I have (#4's and #6's) do not have any of the rails wired through. However, when I eventually install them, I plan to put plastic insulators between the frog and the rails to keep the rails from shifting and shorting out. Rich Battista's video shows that the scale-wheeled diesels don't seem to have problems with the turnouts and my testing with scale-wheeled rolling stock seem to bear that out.

Ross regular 3-rail turnouts are not wired through, plus the frog is Delrin, so there's no problem there.

Hope this helps.

Great question. I wanted to run 2R and 3R on my Scaletrax too. But what about Realtrax? can the same be done assuming the turnouts are a correct size for the 2R locos? I purchased a bunch of Realtrax and scaletrax and I want to use what I got for my locos. I mostly have 3R MTH but I do have some Scale 2R MTH/Sunset locos too that I would like to run..Thx in advance.

BTW, I want to know if Realtrax can be used for 2R, I will decide later which track to use.

Thanks, Matt.  I can confirm that plastic separators to isolate the frog is a good idea.  I've had my share of problems with the frog shorting on my #7.5 Atlas O 2 rail turnouts.  Thinking about replacing some of my Atlas O turnouts with turnouts from O Scale Turnouts on the 2 rail side.  His turnouts have the plastic insulation as I'm sure you know.

Good to know that Ross and Scaletrax turnouts have everything isolated.  Forgot about the plastic frog, Thanks.  The only problem here is my 2 rail Sunset E7A's don't like dead frogs so I have frog juicers on all turnouts.  But, with the E7B attached that problem goes away and I can always add more wheel pickups to the A Unit. 

Between Ross and Scaletrax turnouts I'm thinking Ross gets the nod because I'm concerned that big 2 rail steam engines might not like the #6 Scaletrax turnout.   Any opinion or experience on this?  I can get much more relaxed turnouts from Ross and deal with the plastic frog for 2 rail DC or DCC engines.  I'm not worried about big 3 rail or 2/3 rail engines from MTH making it thru a #6.  It's the big Sunset 2 rail steam engines that concern me.

Bill

RealTrax is a different assembly for a different market. As I recall, the running rails are tied together and would have to be separated (remove the jumpers under the road bed). The last RealTrax I had worked with was building a layout for a member's son a few years back and I can't remember how the under-track connections on the rails were made. Lionel FasTrack has connection bars connected with tabs and can be modified pretty easily.

The RealTrax railhead is nice and flat, so I don't think your scale-wheeled equipment will have problems running on it subject to the wiring and possibly the frog on the O-72 turnouts (my scale-wheeled Hudson hates O-72 turnouts).

Thx Matt.

If you are having problems with frogs, you may also want to consider adding some capacitance to your DCC decoders. In HO many people like to use the TCS Keep Alive capacitors. They work great for dirty track and dead spots.

Keep in mind that Sunset 2R steam is rated between 48"r and 56"r which means you would need O-96 min. in 3-rail terms. To my knowledge Realtrax is not offered that wide.

Bill, my layout is 15X30 feet and all ScaleTrax. It is around the room double track, minimum radius is 6 ft. or 12 foot circle.  I run scale wheels on a lot of equipment. All my 3 rail steam have scale wheels on the engine trucks and  I run a 2 rail Westside ATSF Mikado. I'm gradually converting all my rolling stock to scale wheels from Northwest Short Lines. I suggest their 1/72 flange.

You should not have any problems with Scaletrax. The #6 turnouts handle large steam no problem.

Having said that, I use a NMRA gauge on all wheels and check the track for correct gauge including the switches and do have to make adjustments.

The switches have some large gaps that some scale wheels thump through. All cars need to be adequately weighted. Some 2 rail cars will resist backing through the switches and you may have some steam locos that do as well.

There are other minor problems with the switches, but I think you will be fine using them for 2 rail. Oh, the electrical continuity through the frogs is spotty for 3 rail so I power all the frogs.

Go for it.

Regards, Ron

Ron. thanks for the good info.  I just ordered two #6 scaletrax turnouts and will test them with my most demanding 2 rail engines and rolling stock before permanently installing them.  Bill

Now I do not know what to do. Ron had no problems with #6 switches but Bill did. I hope I can make mine work with a couple of scale wheel engines that I have...

BigBoy4014.

I'm spoiled by the very smooth operation of scale wheels thru #7.5 2 rail scale frogs.  The Scaletrax turnouts I would have been putting in would be in a critical part of the upper mainline and require rock solid performance to meet my requirements.  Since it's an upper level mostly "parade the train" loop, a siding really is not that important.  Just a place to park an extra train.  So, reliability rules in my case.

Also, my requirement is to run large 2 rail brass steam engines -- built for 2 rail operation -- which are less forgiving than MTH engines built for both 2 and 3 rail operation.  For example, my close coupled Sunset FEF-3 UP844 doesn't even much like 60 inch radius curves and needs a #7.5 2 rail turnout to do really well.

I use this 2 rail brass FEF-3 as my "worst case" test on my layout.  The engine has 4 sets of 80 inch drivers resulting in big wheelbase.  The centipede tender has five sets of wheels in the rigid truck arrangement.  It is close coupled.  And it has 4 tethers, 12 wires) between engine and tender which introduces torque between engine and tender.  Also, there is a lot of sideways torque resulting from body mounted Kadee couplers and inertia due to mass on long brass 2 rail passenger cars.  They don't like to play follow the leader.

(If anyone is interested the tethers are: A heavy gauge 4 pin for power and track circuits and lighting common.  A Micronics 4 pin for sparate lighting of headlight, number boards, class lights and work lights/cab light.  A 2 pin Micronics for an engine speaker (with two speakers also in the tender)) and a two pin for the engine hazard light as I needed one extra pair to keep all of the light circuits separate for programming the QSI Titan decoder).  whew!!).

As lots of previous posts and videos like the Black Diamond series will show you lots of guys are successful in running scale wheels on 3 rail track and thru 3 rail switches -- subject to certain limitations and turnout modifications in some cases.

Bill

Thx Bill for your answer. I completely understand. I will work on the 0-72 scaletrax turn outs per another thread to improve their operation.

I also have a SS FEF 4-8-4 but it is 3R so i think it may be OK to run on Scaletrax 0-72?

Believe it or not, my first O scale engine was a Scale wheeled MTH French steamer 2-3-1 (4-6-2 USA) and that was the engine that got me into O gauge. Now I am phasing out my HO stuff and I will be slowly getting into the 2R from MTH and SS and others but since I am heavily invested into 3R locos from MTH (and soon from Lionel) my layout needs to support both, hence Scaletrax seems the best solution for me, for now!

....Cheers!

Sam

Good point, Thx Jonathan!

Before switching from 3RS to 2 rail I had many Sunset 3 rail engines.  They met the 3 rail minimum curve requirements Scott advertised.  This included two FEF-3s.

BTW this post is about Scaletrax and you can have any radius/diameter curve you want with the flextrack.     

Hey Bill where did you find some #6's at?  I am working on a 3 rail layout for my boys and all I have found are #4's and O-72's.

Chris.  Email me and I'll give you the info.  Bill

Email sent.