Upgrading turnouts on our staff railroad
We had a track problem on the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy. There were a bunch of turnouts that were 20 or 30 years old and they’ve long since reached end of life. Instead of trying to fix that, I replaced them with turnouts from the new Walthers Track line.
The new line of HO scale track comes in code 83 and code 100 profiles. So far, Walthers is offering code 83 flex track; bridge track; right- and left-hand turnouts in no. 4, no. 5, no. 6, no. 8, and no. 10; right- and left-hand curved turnouts in 20" and 24" radii, and 24" and 28" radii; a no. 6 double crossover; and no. 3 and no. 4 wye turnouts. The code 100 line includes flex track and nos. 4, 5, and 6 turnouts. Bare rail is available in both code 83 and 100 as well.
For our rehab, I used no. 5 and no. 6 turnouts to replace the Shinohara turnouts that were installed in the 1990s. Looking over the new turnouts, the first thing I noticed is the metal frog. I liked the way the pieces of rail were mortised together there. You can power the frog with a metal contact that comes out the straight side of the turnout. The frog is insulated from the rest of the turnout.
The closure rails and point rails are all one piece, so there’s no need for the points to pick up current by contacting the stock rails – nice! This was the point of failure on the old turnouts.
Flipping the turnout over, there are jumpers between the outside stock rails and the inside closure rails. And then likewise, the rails off of the frog are jumpered on the other end. That means these aren’t power-routing turnouts, and you don’t have to isolate the rails coming off the frog.
Another nice feature is the snap tie bar. A spring holds the tie bar in place. If you want to remove the spring, follow the enclosed instructions. Remove the small plastic retainer plate, then lift out the spring – easy! Because these parts are under the turnout, you’ll have to decide if you want to remove the spring before you install the turnout. I removed them as I didn’t want them to interfere with switch machines I plan to install later. You’ll also have to remove the last ties as pointed out in the instruction sheet to allow rail joiners to slip on the ends of the rails. Walthers sells packs of ties to slip under your rail connections, or you can thin the removed ties so they’ll fit under the rail joiners after the track is laid. The replacement ties (no. 948-83101) are so easy to use, I chose that option.
Replacement was easy as the Walthers turnouts have the same outline as the Shinohara turnouts. There was only one modification I had to make. When the layout was designed, the track center-to-center spacing was set at 2". To make a crossover with the Walthers turnouts at this spacing, I had to modify the frog ends of the turnouts to make them fit closer together. Keep reading and I’ll show you step by step how I did that.