Running steam engine on 45mm track

D

DGH GARDEN

Registered
Hi
I have just bought my first steam engine Lady anne . The problem i am having is when it tries to go over the points on my railway.The track is 45mm and i have regauge the wheel alignment using round house set gauge.When the point is set straight position the loco has no problem but when I change the points to curved position the loco derails.I am using radius 3 points and also i have checked using my small spirit level at the points are level.
Hope someone can help
Thanks
 
Try altering the wheelsets by mm at a time, watch the loco at rail height to see where she goes off, the checkrail may need to be longer, or he may be walking up the frog, if so melt it away a bit with a red hot skewer.
 
Just a few ideas.
1)Make sure some small stone chipping or other foreign body isn't stuck in the check rail, frog or point mechanism.
2)Check that your wheels are properly secured, some Roundhouse locos wear around their wheel insulation and won't stay in guage properly, seen that a few times at my 16mm area group's steam ups. Roundhouse will have spares if you need them
3)Is your point laid correctly on the flat ? What make is it, LGB, Piko, etc ? Don't want to make assumptions. Lady Annes should have no problem with LGB R3.

Max
 
I have to say that I never have had any problems with my Roundhouse Locomotives. All mine have a wheel profile that is pretty well comparable with LGB. By this I mean the Flange Depth and Thickness of the actual wheel.

Now I did have problems with my Merlins in that the Wheel Profile was more akin to Gauge 1 Scale. What that meant was that the Flange Depth was considerably smaller and Thickness of the wheel was somewhat smaller too. What I did to overcome running problems with the LGB R1 Points that I was using at the time was to effectively reduce the Check Rail Gap by around 2-3 mm. I did this by inserting some 00 Code 100 flat bottom rail on the Check Rail. This solved the problem well and did not cause any problems with the LGB Stock that I ran with.

Subsequently I eventually turned to Peco track and here there were no problems at all.

I just wonder how old your Lady Ann is? I am not sure but I think that I may have seen different Wheel Profile on much older Roundhouse Locomotives. If this is so then it may pay you to think about re wheeling with current profile wheels. If this is the case and you consider this option but do not have the ability or guts to do the job yourself, you can always get Roundhouse to do it for you.
JonD
 
Lady Anne, as all Roundhouse products, is essentially a 16mm loco. Often called SM45/32. It's not G gauge/scale.
Flanges are 2mm depth versus LGB's 3mm. The flange root is 1mm thick.
G gauge check rail gaps are necessarily wider than 16mm.
I have heard of some G scalers shimming their check rails with thin brass strip to reduce the gap.
As has been said, reducing the loco's back to back to less than the Roundhouse gauge is likely to help.
However if you then visit a line with Peco G45 track, it may cause trouble.
 
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