Fighting The Curve - How To Mess Up Your Turnouts

I hate mechanical stuff. It’s a well-known truth among my closest friends and relatives. I get the general principles, fail at implementing them and have no patience with troubleshooting when it last for too long and doesn’t provide immediate results. A good solution is to delegate these tasks to others, but most of the time, you are alone with your model railroading problems. So, I have to learn the skills, to work a little bit against my nature and be disciplined.

When I built the Merkiomen replica layout and laid the Monk Subdivision staging yard, I met a lot of issues with commercial turnouts. A lot… Many locomotives weren’t happy at all and I got frustrated and trashed a lot of turnouts, wasting time, material and money. I had no patience to deal with them and fix the issues.

With Vince Valley, I knew I didn’t want to relive that frustrating experiment. Track had to be 100% reliable. “Make it run like a dream” once said the guy editing a web magazine. He sounded quite patronizing and promised heaven, but in hindsight, Mr. Fugate was absolutely right. No amount of aesthetics wizardry and compelling track planning will ever compensate the gut-wrenching feelings of poor running. It pops the immersion bubble completely, unilaterally and irremediably. Curing track issue when the scenery is done is never an exciting endeavour.

I have a collection of random steamers of all size and I sure want them to run flawlessly on the layout and enjoy them, not get frustrated. And if I have to discard a locomotive because it’s unreliable when moving through a turnout, maybe it’s the turnout or track geometry that needs to be addressed and not the model to be shelved.

 

When track laying Vince Valley, I was a little bit cowboy with my turnouts. Most of them started as Peco code 83 Unifrog #6 for their electrical reliability, but I curved them to suit my needs. Curving the rails beyond the frog is generally safe. Curving them in the points area is starting to mess with the geometry. You play with the devil and he won’t forgive you. I know, I made that Faustian pact with him.

 

Curving turnouts is a risky business

I mentioned recently I had a success ration of 50%. It went down to 0% after trying to improve things. Twisted plastic throwbars started to fail, the solid rail points were sitting higher than the stock rail, causing steam locomotives drivers to climb on them and derail. I also observed that curving the turnout affected sometimes the horizontally of some rails, particularly right before the points. It was a mess. I filed some rails here and there and made things worst. Then, I got fed up, picked up new turnouts in my collection and messed with them, getting the same horrible results. I tested them on the benchwork before replacing anything.

 

I cut the webbing on the outside radius

Then, I thought I should just removed the curved turnouts, replace them with straight ones and call it a day… sacrificing my easements in the process, which were of utter importance for larger steamers. All that would be a lot of work and I felt I had to try something else before committing to that “solution”. I took my worst turnout and carefully looked at it. For some reason, I had discovered an older Electrofrog turnout with hinged points didn’t have the issue of catching wheels. While I hate that design, I had to admit the point ends were much finer and were a snug fit against the stock rail. In comparison, the solid rail points of Unifrogs were thicker and protruding, even on brand new turnouts. That seemed to be a design/manufacturing issue that was just made more noticeable when messing up the turnout geometry.

 

More webbing cutting, except under the frog

Since the turnout was deemed busted, I took a small file and reworked the point ends, making then much finer and removing material that was sitting higher than the stock rail. Wheels stopped hitting the points and no longer climbed and derailed. However, the geometry wasn’t perfect and I could see the transition from the straight track to the curved points was not smooth at all. Again, with my file, I reworked the point a little bit over a length of ½” to 3/4” and got rid of that issue. Even my Rivarossi Casey Jones, a temperamental engine like its prototype, liked the fixed turnout. The throwbar would be replaced with a nice custom PCB one soldered on the points.

 

That left me with the yard entrance turnout that was still defective. There, the locomotives truly “kicked” the points, making a strong noise and making them shake quite a bit. It was unacceptable to have a yard throat compromised in such a way. It was visually taking you out of the experience and worst, a serious liability for operation. Since I had decided that turnout was to be replaced and probably a lost cause, I took my files and worked the points. This time, I knew what I was doing and where material needed to be removed or reshaped. It took less than two minutes. Using a long metal framed Atlas container flat, I tested the geometry and didn’t notice any weird motion, noise or brutal kick in the wheels. Could I have solved the problem? I took my Bachmann 0-6-0T, which is an excellent runner, but prone to showing easily geometry issues due to its short wheelbase. It would be a good judge. It worked flawlessly! Now was the time to put Illinois Central 382 to the task and well… it ran smoothly over the turnout.

 

Yard throat with custom turnouts... we shall see!

Not only I had saved my turnouts but proved the curved geometry I foolishly imposed upon them was working. I have still a few apprehensions and won’t glue or ballast anything until operations have been carried on for a much longer time, but I have troubleshooted my turnout problems and acquired new skills. I always shunned away from custom track work, but at the end of the day, it’s not that hard when you have the right mindset. Running out of turnouts to trash forced me to understand and repair what I had in hand. It would have been stupid to get rid of well-built turnouts which were only unreliable because I messed up the points. Repairing them was no different than working on a hand laid turnout, so I look at what the folks do when custom-building tracks and implemented their techniques. It worked. And I may be tempted to replace a few compromised Peco plastic throwbars in the future.

That said, in the yard, I had made a few cutoms turnouts and they are much more reliable than my first attempt, but the yard geometry is a little bit wonky and could cause some issues when switching and coupling cars. I'm never a fan of having a curve, then a small section of straight track then another curve. It's visually ugly and mechanically unreliable. Hence, I may be tempted to use 2 Peco Electrofron curved #7. They fit, have the right curvature, don't reduce storage space and are reliable once jumpers are soldered to the hinged points. Sure, laying turnouts was a steep learning curve even for an experienced modeller like me, but the learning was totally worth it. I feel I'm more in control of the result instead of just slapping components on an uneven roadbed and wishing for the best. Even small steps such as sandind the cork roadbed to make it perfectly level are things I didn't do and which have a tremendous impact on reliability and appearance. As I said to a friend, it's two steps forward, one step back... not bad if you ask me!