One dirty little rail joint!

[Ralph]

I just replaced a #4 turnout with a # 6 to ease the transition from one track to a siding. I've always had some cars derail there. Test running it w/o power all of the cars that formerly had a problem negotiating that turnot now glide through smoothly.
Powering up a locomotive, however, led to frustration. The engine moved as usual until the wheels passed the end of the new turnout and rolled onto the next section of track. Then it all but crawled despite my turning up the power pack to full. I checked wiring, the loco, etc. Finally I bit the bullet and pulled out the turnout I just installed (fortunately hadn't ballasted yet) and examined it. I noticed one of the rail joiners looked pretty tarnished. I replaced it with a cleaner one and that did the trick! Sheesh!
Ralph

 

[neilmunck]

Aye, thats why I solder all my rail joints!

 

[Tyson Rayles]

Amen!

 

[Fred_M]

AND alway use new joiners. (here you thought that was just hype for atlas to sell more joiners with) FRED

 

[60103]

We had a problem a while back. During the operating session, a whole section of the layout would go dead.
We finally found that the main common feeder for that section had come off its terminal. The common feeder was wired to the common rail and there were other feeders wired to the common rail so that whole section was being fed through the rail. In the middle of this, one rail joiner was a bit loose and every time a train passed over it, it wiggled, lost contact and the section went dead.