Large Scale Central

LGB Rolling Stock thru the Switches (BUMP)

General Discussion
#1

Since I run only LGB Engines, Rolling Stock mostly LGB and USA Trains, on LGB track and switches, some of the cars tend to lift up when going thru the frogs on the switches. The problem is easily seen when watching what is going on, the wheel flanges are bottoming out on the frogs when rolling thru, thus the car lifts up a bit and operation is not smooth thru the frog. I guess my question is, should I deepen the frogs so the wheel flanges will not bottom out, or is there any reason LGB made them this way. They don’t derail and the bump is very slight, just wonder why they didn’t take another 100,000 off the flanges, or the frog bottoms during manufacturing. Since my stuff doesn’t derail I might just live with it, as it’s just a slight bump, but sometimes I try to be a perfectionist, when I should just leave it alone and be happy.

trainman

#2

John;

Not an expert opinion, but an observation from bygone days. When I worked on the Dry Gulch Railroad at Hershey Park, we would sometimes have a welder there more than once a year to build up the metal in the frog guideways and frog points of our spring switches. When I asked why the guideways had to be built up, I was told that the wheels were supposed to pass through the frogs on their flanges, and that passing on their flanges made sure that they picked the correct route. That was a two foot gauge railroad. I cannot tell you whether the same logic applies to larger gauges.

Regards, David Meashey

P.S. I should probably note that the flanges on our Crown Metal Products locomotive and cars were not nearly as large (in proportion to the wheel diameter) as the flanges are on large scale equipment. The large flanges are supposed to help the wheels hold the rails under outdoor conditions that can cause track to deviate from level to undulating in a matter of hours, BUT that also means that they tend to go Clump! and Bump! traversing frogs.

#3

John,

I had the same issue a while back. On one turnout, I deepened the frog. In another, the issue were the rails coming “out” of the frog. They were just enough higher than the frog to cause derailments, so I ground them down a bit to make a smooth transition from the frog back onto the brass rails.

I am a big believer in not messing with things that work, especially as I seem to be in the break once / fix twice club. I was reticent to take on this job, as overdoing the correction could’ve been worse than the problem.

Eric

#4

When I “tuned up” my Arsto switches I had to sand down the frogs to the rail-head height. Then I deepened the flange-ways to 1/8th of an inch, since sanding the tops of the frogs made the flange-ways shallower. I still have a few cars that bump a bit in the switches, but I am the sort that if it aint broke I aint gonna try and fix it. If the wheel flanges don’t ride on the bottom of the flange-ways, then the wheel will drop into the gap between the rail and the frog point. Would you rather have a bump, or a drop, and subsequent bump, as the wheel climbs up out of the gap?

#5

LGB switches/turnouts use the flange to make sure the motorized track cleaner for one does not come in contact with the plastic frogs/rails even in the different crossovers.

This is why just changing out just the disk material can be bad as the TCL plastic rings are made to make the polishing wheels not touch the plastic rails. I change the plastic tcl discs every other time I insert new polishing discs, These units are polishers, not rail grinders!!

#6

After reading all the responses I’m beginning to think my little bump is not that bad after all. It is true that some of the frogs on some switches stick-up above the rail slightly and on other switch frogs the wheel flanges hit on the inside bottom of the frog. I personally don’t see going out and getting on my hands and knees with sandpaper, Dremel, or whatever I decide to use to correct the problem, if at some point I remove the switches for whatever reason I might take them to the work bench and correct the problem there. I was thinking at the bench I could use the Dremel with the router attachment and the correct bit and run it on the bottom inside of the flange to remove what I needed for flange wheel clearance. Like everything else getting to the problem is always more work then actually doing it.

trainman

#7

I don’t believe that sanding down the frogs to rail-height is a good idea at all, and in fact this has proven detremental on my railroad.

The raise in the frog make the railcar want to tip to the outside, regardless of which path is chosen. The “tipping” helps guide the car through the frog in the right direction helping to keep it from “picking the points.” I’ve found this to be especially true on the 10’ diameter AristoCraft turnouts with the AristoCraft heavyweight coaches.

I found that I could he could improve tracking by bending a 1/64" thick by 3/32" wide brass strip around it as shown in the photo. The modification is completely reversible. Note that brass strip is usually die cut such that the edges on one side are rounded and the edges on the other side are sharper. The rounded edge should be the one facing the wheels.

George Schreyer picked up on my idea when he visited my railroad and used this trick in one specific place where a particular car would derail on the trailing point from the diverging route every time. This was his Aristo Streamliner track cleaning car which places very large torsion forces on the trucks. The lead wheel set would derail in the frog every time until the guard rail was tightened to bring the wheel back into line through the whole frog. He placed a 0.015" x 0.200" styrene shim behind the brass strip to tighten it up just a little more. Now the car gets through that turnout without derailing every time.

This is the best thing you can do to the turnouts.

#8

so…the wheel rides up on the point, and this prevents the wheel from picking the point before it rides up on the frog???

Well, I have always contended that what works elsewhere doesn’t always work here and vice a versa. Must be a difference in gravitational forces, magnetic lines of flux, or gremlins with their diabolical sabotage.

I would really hesitate to make the flange-ways too deep. Even on the full scale railroads, the flanges ride on the flange-way bottoms to support the wheel across the gap. And even full scale rolling stock will sometimes bump going through a switch.

#9

I make my own switches and my frogs are fabricated from bent/filed and soldered brass rails. There is no surface for the flanges to roll on. They work fin with a minimum of bump bump. They are wider radius than even the wide radius LGB switches which probably matters. The trick is that the wheel tread rolls on the rail heads across the frog.

Where the wheel crosses the flangeway, the wheel tread is wide enough to ride both rails. There may be a slight dip of the wheel but hardly noticable.

Note that there is no power in my rails