I really like the look of Micro Engineering’s turnouts. They
have a smaller, more to-scale appearance around the guardrails and frog area; with
prototypical tie size and spacing, including the headblocks. They also have a
lead (the distance from points to frog) and overall length set up for 2”-on-center
yard track spacing out of the box with no trimming or modification necessary. This
is more than can be said for most other brands of HO scale turnouts.
A while back, a post on a certain prominent model railroad
manufacturer’s online forum (I won’t name names, but it rhymes with ‘Schmatlas’…)
asked about these turnouts. The poster said he had “heard from a couple people
down at the club that they are junk” or some such, I am closely paraphrasing
here. I was quick to come to Micro
Engineering’s defense, essentially stating that anybody who thinks these
turnouts are “junk” apparently doesn’t know how to install track properly. But
maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t have spoke so soon.
That is not to say
they are indeed junk.
Lately I’ve been having more derailments than I am
accustomed to. A lot more derailments than I experienced back when I was using
Walthers Code 83 turnouts, I should say. These derailments are almost always of
the “splitting a switch” variety, where one truck on a given freight car decides
it wants to be a rebel and not follow the same path through the switch as the
others. And I’ve noticed that it more often than not seems to happen with a
specific make and type of freight car (Athearn PS-2600’s and Athearn ACF 2970’s, which are both
short-wheelbase cars, for those of you interested). I’ve also noticed that some
cars and locomotives will make a faint clicking noise as they pass through the
points of these turnouts. Recently I decided I’d had enough and broke out the
NMRA gauge to investigate. I quickly found the issue… as it turns out,
the Micro Engineering turnouts do not meet NMRA specs in the point clearance
department. In fact, they don’t meet the standard by a sizeable margin. What
this basically means is, if you have an under-gauged wheelset, that is to say,
a wheelset whose wheels are spaced too closely together, one wheel will catch
and try to follow the point that is opposite of the route selected (more often
than not it occurs when the turnout is thrown for the diverging route, since
the diverging point rail is carrying the brunt of the wheel-guiding force on
the flanges), forcing the opposite wheel up and over its respective railhead. Wheelsets
that are just slightly tighter than perfect gauge will click because they are
hitting the end of the point rail momentarily before following their correct
path. Checking the wheel gauge on my Athearn 2600 and 2970 hoppers confirms this, they are
almost entirely tight-gauged. I would go so far as to say that one can safely
assume that, given the choice between tight-gauged wheelsets and wide-gauged
wheelsets, it is better to have them slightly wider than perfect gauge, if you are
using these turnouts.
I know just what to do to fix this issue. It involves
removing the plastic throwbar and soldering a new one in place made from N
scale PC board tie material (available from Fastracks), correcting the point
spacing to meet NMRA standards as I go. Anybody who has tried handlaying their
own turnouts knows how to do this and how straightforward it is if you have the
necessary tools. The caveat is, I can’t do this modification on my turnouts
without pulling them up (out of fully-ballasted roadbed, mind you) and taking
them to the workbench, which is more effort and risk than I’m willing to endure.
So I guess that means I’d better invest
more time and energy into making sure all my wheelsets are in gauge. Sigh…
In closing, I can’t help but wonder if the ‘guys down at the
club’ who think these turnouts are junk, in all actuality have a bunch of
tight-gauged wheelsets on their rolling stock.
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