n9

I thought so too at first, but not quite true. Bogies are not immune. Dapol's B Set coaches have bogies and they suffer The Peco Wobble quite badly. In contrast my Farish Mk Is and Staniers are pretty smooth.

You know I was expecting everyone to say this! And yes, I suspect the unsupported wheels aren't entirely innocent. Hmm, given what's on view I think we'll have to respectfully differ on what the word compromise means 🙂. I do wonder though how all this "accepted" bouncing compares with pointwork from other manufacturers, Arnold, Walthers, Kato, Fleischmann, etc. And I agree, my options are either to lump it, or remove the worst offending pieces, or jump ship.

Definitely those are lovely layouts in the vids, no doubt about it, but I think it will forever evade me how that rallycross effect has somehow become accepted, or how in my video a loco nose- or tail-end swing with an amplitude of roughly 0.5cm doesn't appear to raise too many eyebrows in 9mm scale. But fair enough, perhaps I'm the odd one out. Your replies have been very helpful and informative regardless. Thank you.

Thank you for all the replies! Certainly it seems my question has been answered: derailments happen very few times, and usually with a specific item of stock, or singular location, or human error, or a coupling issue. My derailments (so far!) happen only on double slips and long crossings. Clear suspects are now the driving wheels on my Brit and 9F. (They tend to derail on them 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 times.) However, I do find it hard to separate reliable running across any point from the amount of rocking and jumping up and down caused by Peco's frog potholes. Here's a video showing one of the slips removed from the layout and placed on another flat piece of XPS with a couple of straights. My 03 first runs across it alone, showing the lateral slaloming (which happens with the Brit tender too, as well as stock) followed by the 03 pulling a random assortment of 4-wheelers from Farish, Revolution, and Peco that shows wagons rocking and jumping up and down quite alarmingly, at least to my view. (The 03 and Brit tender have wheels in gauge.) Do your Peco Code 55 slips work this badly? Both of mine do this. Perhaps with less swaying, I've found this effect is replicated on every Peco Code 55 point, crossing, and slip I have purchased as new. Additionally, the speed of the 03 is as slow as it will go on this particular slip without losing continuity irrecoverably at one of the frogs. I suspect that this issue also has a lot to do with the potholes and slalom effect. I can say that approximately 70% of my time and effort on the layout this last 18 months, has been spent investigating, correcting, or attempting to correct the problems I have encountered with Code 55. Not sure if that's expected, but it certainly feels like far too much. Thank you for confirming that Peco can make mistakes! 🙂 I hope so too! 🙂 It is level, although I can see why it might not look that way in the pic. The diamond is angled away from the camera to the right, and to its right there is also more underlay in the foreground for track I haven't laid yet. So an optical illusion. I have been trying out shims to counter the drops in the frogs. Do you know what height the plasticard should be? The opposite wheel is resting at the bottom of a frog pothole 🙂 In my innocence I went with Woodland Scenics foam underlay for acoustic reasons. If I could go back I'd probably choose cork. I've found the flex in the foam is also it's big weakness and I've ended up replacing short sections with wood where strength was needed, e.g. to hold a smooth join on a curve. There's a lot I've learnt only after I started building and laying track. Wish I'd known everything that would be unacceptable to me a lot earlier! But at least I now know to test a lot more, a lot more thoroughly, and a lot earlier.

Maybe I've been very unlucky then. My layout is 2x1m, has about 20 points, two double slips, two crossovers (all Electrofrog or Unifrog). Both crossovers are as I've described, as are both long crossings, which also both came with one dead rail in the diamond. I think the frog bounce will be evident from any video out there showing stock running across Peco Code 55 points, especially 4 wheel stock. I think one of the Dawlish videos on here had an example with clay wagons bouncing. It wasn't specifically about this, just a lovely train running. If I find it again, I'll post it. But here's a picture of my Revolution tanker stopped at a frog, in this case on a diamond. Note the raised rear wheel on the right. In fact, if it's rolled lightly, it will come to an abrupt stop there as the front wheel falls into what is, in effect, a pot hole. But pretty much all frogs and flangeways on Code 55 are far too large for the stock I have. Foam underlay on XPS (extruded polystyrene) boards that are 4cm thick mounted on a sturdy wooden frame. The only uneven surfaces on it are 3 joins in the XPS, which I've catered for, and the slips and crossings don't span them. I tried ply, twice. The ply boards each warped after about 3 months despite being nailed/glued or screwed to a sturdy frame. Gave up on it for lack of knowing any decent wood suppliers around these parts. I have to order everything online, and if it comes from the UK expect at best 1 month delivery, at worst more than 4 months. This makes returns seldom worth the hassle and cost in import duties. In the last 18 months I've only returned things once. That said, given my run of grievances, the lack of a local hobby shop is probably a very good thing for them! 🙂

I'd do that if I was on wood. Would be better still if the track you bought for running trains actually didn't need to be made flat in the first place.

This is kind of what I was expecting most people to say, and I'd expect my layout to have such failures, so this is helpful to know. It could well be, and driving wheels are now firmly "persons of interest" in my investigations. Just need to muster up the courage to dismantle enough of two Dapol steamers to get at those wheels, because they break if you just look at them wrong. Would love more confirmation from others, because I can't see how they could ever be reliable. With the huge frog gaps, the slightest nudge on a wagon makes the diamond behave like a point. And such is the drop, Revolution tankers will have a wheel in the air.

I think that's the best suggestion I've heard all year! It's also exactly what I've been thinking all day. What a brilliant mind you have! 😁

No, they are most certainly not flat. It's how they came out of the packet new, with two hills, one for each frog. I spent an inordinate amount of time, lifting them out, reinforcing the underlay (for better or worse, I chose foam on XPS) with wood instead of foam, and then nailing the little darlings flat. Still got the derailments. It's part of what made me question the sanity of continuing with Peco. I reinforce areas with track joins with wood the same way, because Peco's insulating joiners often aren't strong enough to hold their shape, so that's solved too. I also reinforce all points in 3 places now: start, middle, and end. Why? Because Peco straight points aren't straight. The bend in the curved diverging rail causes the straight rail to bend because the webbing isn't strong enough to fully counteract that force. So reinforcing in the middle of the point provides a place to put a fulcrum to correct that. Likely the same is true of their curved points, but it's a lot harder to spot a train that went around a bend a little less than it should. But string a few "straight" points together, and you'll see another slalom. Excellent idea about the mirror. I will try that. Thank you!

Okay... I'm getting very few people saying (or at least confessing!) they have derailments. That's something, and that's good because if that's true it means I may need to take a closer look at my main culprits. Regardless, the bounce I get from just about every axle on just about every piece of stock (Farish, Dapol, Rapido), some coaches (Dapol B sets), loco tenders, and my 03, when they cross any frog, be it point, slip, or crossing, is just daft. Going over a slip is a slalom. I cannot see that not impacting continuity with small locos. (And my 03 does suffer electrically on the slips.) I get derailments on Peco's long crossings and their double slips. Maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 times. Main culprits are a Dapol Brit and 9F, mostly at slow test speeds. Back to backs are correct on all wheels that aren't part of the motion. Haven't touched those yet because of how fragile those locos are. But it's the other wheels that are in gauge that seem to be leading the derailments. I've had one diesel derail on a long crossing. But I test a lot less with diesels since they tend to handle frog bumps and other irregularities much better. It's not trackwork. It's flat/eased/measured a squillion times/sleepers adjusted individually/redone every single time I've not been satisfied. To test, I've removed slips from layout and mounted them flat with 4 straights leading into them. No improvement to derailments.

Yes, I've been experimenting with shims. Looked like it could work, but I'm guessing at the right height. I've tried 0.3mm but I think that's too shallow. What height are yours?

Indeed. The fact Code 55 is so well established is why I was so disappointed with it. Perhaps it's different in OO, but principles might also suggest that if you design track to cater for such disparate wheel proportions as Peco does with Code 55, you get the results you get - I don't think any amount of wheel tuning or electrical reliability will remove the pogo stick effect every axle adopts traversing every frog. That to me is an issue, and not a small one. And then there's 2FS, which I think is also quite well established and probably shares some of the reasoning behind why I've not been overly enthused by Peco's offerings. But I don't want to digress. I know many people are perfectly happy with Peco. I'm really after a feel for how often mishaps occur on people's layouts because I only have my own experiences to go on right now. I'm glad you rarely have derailments!

I guess this might vary by scale, but I'm particularly interested in N. The reason is that today, after 18 months of work on my layout, I finally reached a point where I seriously contemplated ripping out all of my Peco Code 55 track and starting over with something distinctly less #@*! troublesome. Why I think Peco Code 55 is so awful isn't the reason for this post. It's that some time later, it dawned on me that maybe my expectations are just not realistic. And I really don't have a baseline. How often do trains derail on your layout? And how often does the hand of god come out for other reasons?

Thank you Robert! I've turned my attention to some much-delayed trackwork for a few days, but I will be in touch! Very kind of you. I'll likely have another go with the motor itself beacuse from what you say I've probably made a problem worse trying to tweak that screw. I should have at least tried to take the motor apart when I was in there. Those things still largely look like Scalextric motors from 50 years ago, so the territory hopefully won't be too unfamiliar to me. Here's a pic of a bogie. Struggling for terminology, but in those metal parts running along either side, it looked like the indentations that take the pointy-ends of one of the axles were too deep or worn out. Certainly that one axle had substantially greater lateral play than all of the others. Other than replacing those metal parts, not sure if there's another fix? Bonus question: That back-to-back gauge is hopeless for anything with cogs in it. Is there another design?

I've gone hybrid. XPS boards with foam underlay thats spliced with underlay-shaped wood where strength is needed, e.g. at joins on curves, pointwork, incline transitions.

As promised, just to round off the story, this is how it ends... 🙂 The connections to the motor were dodgy. The pic probably shows how bare wire could easily come into contact with the metal body. Painted or not, shorting was happening with the body because just pushing on that area with the loco running caused flickering lights and the burning smell. Perhaps telling, are the remnants of electrical tape that used to isolate the area. (In the pic, it's what's hanging to the right of the motor screw terminal with a tear in it.) Resoldering those wires was much harder than first appeared. I wanted to remove the terminal screws holding the little plates onto which the wire is soldered to reduce the risk of melting anything. But those screws are just carp. They may even have had their heads filled with glue. In the end, I couldn't remove them, and went in with the soldering iron managing not to melt anything. I think you're supposed to be able to rotate those metal plates to keep the solder joint away from the metal body, but since the screws were stuck, I just soldered to the bottom of the plate instead. Anyway, that fixed the flickering lights, it cured the burning smell, and I was hoping that would have been it. Sadly, and as suggested earlier, the motor is definitely rogered too. I basically had the motor out on its own with my controller connected directly to its power feeds. It doesn't run at a steady speed. It will for maybe a minute, then slow down, then speed up, all quite random. What I hadn't noticed either until now (because I hadn't dared run it on a track until I knew what the burning was), is that with the body on the thing sounds like a lawnmower. That's as well as being quite wobbly on account of the cups on one axle being worn out or too big. (Yes, I had the bogies and gears apart too.) So that's it really. Sadly I think I'm left with no option than to send this one back to Hattons. From what someone else said, motors for these aren't too easy to come by. I'm left with mixed feelings really. Elated at the amount of work I put it in and at how much I managed to solve, but deflated that in the end it wasn't enough and I don't have a loco that I really wanted. Miffed too, that Hattons sold this to me as "Fine when last run." I've learnt a tremendous amount though. Special mentions to @Steven B, @Robert Shrives, and @Izzy. Your help was fantastic. And thanks to everyone else who chimed in too. Really appreciate it! Here's how she looked after my efforts:

Actually, after my latest tests, I may have found the problem, mainly thanks to the rolling road and being able to poke things as the loco is running. It goes back to the very first pic I posted: Something is up with both that red wire leading down to the motor, and the corresponding black wire that does the same on the other side, because when I poked it at the point where it connects to the motor, the flickering lights returned. And after a few pokes to confirm the flicker, I noticed the burning smell... So it seems like those wires must be shorting. When I redid the soldering, I did all the connections to the main PCB and to both light boards, but I didn't touch those. I'll resume tomorrow. But I really hope this is finally it!! Will post an update.

The smell is electrical, like the Scalextric cars I used to have as a kid, but noticeably stronger than with all the other locos I have. I've had it on my rolling road with the body off but lighting connected (since it's soldered) and I already resoldered all of the wires (I've assumed the wires themselves are okay.) Luckily I have another 22 to compare it with. Compared to that one, it doesn't run as smoothly, but not too bad. They both take around 60 on my Gaugemaster Combi to attain the sort of speed I'd want to have them for running in, but this one doesn't maintain constant speed, slowing quite noticeably from time to time, and then speeding back up again. (This is all with the blanking plug fitted.) The other 22 does this a little, but a lot less. Probably differences in back to backs and wheel alignment come into play there, but I have swapped the bogies out, and while it's then more consistent at running, it still has the strong Scalextric smell. So I think that rules out friction somewhere in the gears and bogies over stressing the motor. The motor just seems to struggle more. I've also measured the temperature at the top of the metal body right above the motor after 10 minutes running, and it reached 40C/104F. I don't know if that's "normal", but it seems quite high to me considering its the outside edge of a pretty thick metal body. So I'm leaning more towards excessive friction somewhere between motor and worms, unless something else can explain what I'm seeing? Interestingly, the lamp flickering continued for a few minutes after I resoldered the wires, and then just disappeared. Hasn't reocurred, at least not during the numerous tests I've been doing since yesterday. Not sure if this is one of the "older" models you mention, but it's this one from 2013: https://www.hattons.co.uk/59017/dapol_2d_012_004d_class_22_diesel_locomotive_d6313_in_br_green_with_small_yellow_panels_dcc_fitted/stockdetail If I'd purchased this from eBay, I'd have no complaint. But the way this loco performs was not as described by Hattons, and they refused my request twice to test all 3 of the locos before shipping them to me. The 52 I think I will post about, but the axles all look out of whack, and the design of them, if it's the same as the HO/OO version, is not going to mean a straightforward solution judging from the posts I've read - one of them requiring a lathe in addition to considerable modifications.

Thank you, Bob! Alright, I think I'll start by redoing the wiring since it's obviously pretty poor. And maybe follow that up by stripping down to the motor. The motor hasn't been mentioned yet. Could foreign objects be burning up in there??? I say this because in addition to huge dollops of grease that I found in the bogies, it was a bit like an episode of CSI: I found there what looked like static grass and something that looks like small pieces of gold leaf... Perhaps some of that has worked its way into where it shouldn't? This pic shows the excess grease I removed (left) along with a couple of flecks of that "gold leaf" (a bit further to the right) - I've no idea what that is. I should say that all this aside, the loco looks in pretty good condition.

I got some Vallejo Plastic Putty a while ago but haven't got round to using it. Not sure if it will fit the bill, but it allegedly works like this:

Brilliant! Thank you Steven! I'd already cleaned the board with IPA last night, mainly because the build-up looked very excessive. There are 2 screws holding the PCB - I just took the picture after removing one of them. And you're right, I've just tested it and the black coating is not conductive. I quite wrongly assumed it was. There is a matching black wire on the other side. There seems to be no continuity with the chassis for either wire. I've just put the loco on my rolling road with the blanking plug in, and there is still a burning smell. I have no idea what to check next. Although I did notice the red light at the wrong end of the direction of travel flicker on and off ever so slightly. Anyone have any further suggestions?

It's here:

Fantastic!!! Thank you so very very much!!! But how on Earth were you able to work out that BZX84C15-V is the right part number from all those listed? Is it witchcraft?

This is kind of a cross-post and I'm not sure if it's frowned upon. Apologies if so. I'm just hoping a different set of eyes may have the answer for me. I want to replace this damaged transistor, which I've identified as Y4, and which to me looks like a SOT-23 type. However I see there are quite a few of this type as shown here, and I don't know if they are interchangeable or whether I need to buy a specific one. Also if you can point me to where I can get one shipped to the EU that would be fantastic. Background details are in this post, but in summary: the damaged transistor is on a PCB for a Farish Class 40 which I suspect is causing dim red lights in one direction only. In other words, the red lights in the cluster function correctly when placed at one end of the loco, but are very dim or off when the same light cluster is placed at the other end of the loco - they only start to come on when the speed is almost at full. All other lights in the cluster work fine at either end. This pic from that other post shows the damaged transistor (which is damaged, that has been answered): And the other side of that board: And yes, I am aware I can replace the board entirely, but that seems quite wasteful since everything else about the loco works fine. Thanks!

If by the protective coating you mean the usual sheen on a PCB, that's not it. There is definitely something else on it - a build-up of some kind that's hardened. For want of a better description, it's a bit like tartar. But maybe that's what you mean? I've only taken apart a handful of locos so far, but I haven't seen what's on this PCB before. This is extremely helpful. Thank you. It did come with a decoder and I will definitely be fitting the blanking plug when I next power it up. I'll double check that red lead because it looks like it might be touching. I see no obvious damage to the decoder. Probably will put some kapton where things look scary. Having cleaned that transistor, it's casing isn't partially melted after all, so I'm still left without conclusive signs of what burnt to give off the smell. More digging to do... Before I forget, I should be fair to Hattons and say they did offer some discounts almost right away. I'm seeing how bad the damage is on all 3 locos before agreeing to that or arguing my case further. But generally I've found their customer service pretty good so far.