The Atlantic and Southern Build Thread Continued, Part 3

[Zephyrus52246]

Thanks for the explanation, Tom.  The two sections are electrically isolated.  I'd be worried a short wheelbase steamer would stall out unless it had a "Keep Alive", otherwise it looks like it works!


Jeff

[MAP]

Nice work Tom.  That crossing works perfectly "as seen on TV"!

[GPdemayo]

Well done Tom.....looking forward to seeing it in action. 

[GPdemayo]

Here's an alternate source for really small spike heads.  Tain't cheap, though.  http://www.proto87.com/product1904.html


dave

Thanks Dave.....I bought some stuff from them years ago, but don't remember the spikes.....I'll check out their site again. 

[Bruce Oberleitner]

Looking Good Uncle Tommie!

[ACL1504]

Thanks for the explanation, Tom.  The two sections are electrically isolated.  I'd be worried a short wheelbase steamer would stall out unless it had a "Keep Alive", otherwise it looks like it works!


Jeff

Jeff,

This past Saturday morning we ran an Atlas 4 truck switcher across the diamond. The switcher does have WOW but no Keep Alive. There was not one second of hesitation while crossing.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Nice work Tom.  That crossing works perfectly "as seen on TV"!

Mark,

Thank you, appreciate you following along. This was my first attempt at making a Fast Track item and I'm very pleased with the result. I must admit my experience with soldering brass helped a lot.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Well done Tom.....looking forward to seeing it in action. 

Greg,

Thank you and I'm glad you got to see it this past Saturday morning. I told the Judge that if you came by, the first thing you'd do is get a freight car truck and roll it back and forth.

And, I was correct. You did exactly that and I'm very happy I passed the "Greg Test".

Tom

[ACL1504]

Looking Good Uncle Tommie!

Cousin Brucie,

Thank you, very much appreciate the kind support.

Tom

[ACL1504]

In his Saturday Report, the Judge mentioned we had some derailments while backing around some curves. This has been an issue for us for the past few years. Not sure why it took me so long to fix the problem but we did fix the derailment issue on Saturday morning.

These ACL cars are some of the first Walthers came out with many years ago. This is when Walthers passenger cars and heavyweights sold for around $34.00.

They also came with McCrappy couplers.

I hope this next bit of information isn't news but Kadee makes a couple dozen different couplers. For the purpose of this thread, I'll only be discussing couplers with short, medium and long shanks. Shanks are also know as coupler arms.

Walthers cars hate to back up especially with short coupler shanks. Walthers new cars all come with the short shank/arms on the couplers. Many years ago I switched one end of the car to a medium (all in front) and a long (all in back) of the cars.

This did help but still caused a few derailments at times.

The following photo shows the cars with one long, on the left and one medium coupler on the right. The train is going forward. No problem.



The diaphragms look prototypical here.

Now, when backing, the curve pushes the couplers out and the pressure on the diaphragms causes the cars to lift off the rails.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

The problem was solved when I replaced all the couplers with the long shank/arm. I used Kadee #26 Long Centerset Shank couplers on all the passenger cars.

In the next photo, the train is moving left to right and you can see the gap between the diaphragms is much wider.



Here the train is backing on the same curve, diaphragms closer together.



The result, no derailments of any kind. As I mentioned, no clue other than laziness on my part in not changing the couplers sooner.

The outside track is 38" radius and the inside is 36" radius. We backed the train through the curves in both directions and on both tracks with no derailments.

[ACL1504]

This afternoon I started laying track in the freight yard at Summit. Tomorrow I'll go over an issue I came across ii the alignment of track.

Here is where I stopped. Can I say it is under construction?

[Dennis Bourey]

I agree it's under construction. 

[Judge]

I anticipate there may be some disagreement about using the long shank couplers on the 85' passenger cars.  The gap between cars is more noticeable than before.  However, these cars are models and compromise is inevitable in many phases of the hobby.  The distance between the cars is something Tom and I can live with considering the A&S has plans to back passenger trains into the Union Station to be located at Summit and derailment will be avoided, at least in most cases.  BTW derailments of passenger cars did not only occur when backing up.  It happened fairly regularly on the ovalix going forward.  Every time a derailment occurs on the ovalix, somebody (Tom) has to crawl under the layout to get inside that structural miracle.  It is extremely difficult for me to get inside the ovalix due to both knees being replaced and Tom is catching up to me on age.  So I give a loud cheer to replacing the couplers with long shanks.  Those cars just wouldn't back up without derailing, even on our broad curves.

[ReadingBob]

Had it not been pointed it out I can pretty much guarantee that I would never notice, or question, the change in the gap between the passenger cars.  As compromises go in our hobby this one is very minor as far as I'm concerned.