I am nearly done the additions to the Red Baron railroad. I was testing out running and my SD70 kept having the front (or back) most wheels jump the track on a #6 USA Trains switch.
The configuration of the problem area is 10 foot diameter curves going into a right #6 USA Trains switch. See photo. After debugging it for a while, I realized the wheel on the outside was jumping up and thus the guard rail was not effective. This only happens when the engine goes in reverse, and only seems to be happening on this particular switch. All my other switches the engine runs fine on. This is the only one that is fed by a curve, and a graded curve at that.
Here is what I tried
- Leveling out the #6 switch. It was on a grade.
- Leveling out the curves feeding into the switch.
- Moving the track to my patio which is level and testing it there. Never seemed to jump here.
- Different #6 switch.
- Adding some straight track between the 10 foot curves and #6 switch. This seemed to work if i added almost a foot of track there.
- Floppy wheel spacing (back to back) on both front and back is at 1.570.