Loco hesitation/stall at points

[AceinOz]

Hi, I am new to model railways. I started with a DC set up but after much youtube watching I have taken the plunge into DCC, albeit as simply as possible by purchasing a Select DCC controller. It all works fine except my smaller wheelbase locos (that came with the Mixed Freight set) pause and/or stall at some of the points. All the points have point clips installed. I would appreciate any advice as to what the issue might be.

[Chrissaf]

It is an extremely common issue when the smaller [and much cheaper] 0-4-0 and sometimes 0-6-0 locos traverse Hornby points at slow to moderate speed. Apart from fitting a DCC 'Stay Alive' [can be difficult to find space in these small locos] there isn't an awful lot you can do about it that doesn't involve modifying the track in some way.

Such as, changing the Hornby points for another brand. The issue with Hornby points is that their design has not really been updated in years to be more reliable with the lighter short wheel-base locos that are common today, particularly ones that have been upgraded to DCC. The plastic frog area on Hornby points is quite large compared to other brands and being an old design with associated less specific manufacturing tolerances, the frog areas on the points can be more problematic for these short wheelbase locos with pickups that are very close together.

A simple modification that does sometimes have success in these situations is to add an additional track pin to the point where one was never intended to be, so a pilot hole will need to be drilled first to accommodate it. Place this additional track pin as close to the frog area as you can get. The idea being, that the track pin will lower and flatten the frog area against the baseboard. Do not place the additional track pin in the frog itself. There are two isolated electrical paths that pass through the plastic of the frog, and if you put a pin in the frog itself you might short these electrical paths together. If the additional track pin doesn't work, then changing the brand of point or adding a decoder 'stay alive' might be your only workable solutions.

Some on here may suggest changing to PECO Electrofrog points because they are more friendly to 'short wheelbase' locos, but be aware that PECO Electrofrog points use completely different track geometry to Hornby and are not a 'one for one' swap, and could need a complete redesign of your current layout.

[AceinOz]

Chris - many thanks for the detailed reply and advice. Much appreciated. I will try the track pin idea first, before going down the path of using different points. Cheers.

[AceinOz]

What about using something like peco SL points on the goods yard/shunting area where the smaller locos live, and keep the hornby points for the main line.

[Flashbang]

Hi

Some things to be aware of....

Peco Streamline (SL prefixed items) are to a much larger footprint than Peco ST or standard Hornby points. They are also to a larger radius turnout. Only the Hornby Express points are near in radius to the SL Small radius turnout. Medium and large are far greater.

Also the natural track centres of two SL points when used a s a cross-over pair is 50mm while on ST or Hornby it is 67mm, so additional pieces of track may be needed in between two SL points to space them wider to match Hornby or ST track centres.

Next there are three types of SL point. SL-nnn are Insulated frog - same as Hornby ones are. SL-Ennn Electrofrog - exactly the same size as Insulated frog range, but with all metal frog area. Finally is the SL-Unnn are Unifrog points, but very few Unifrog points are available currently in Code 100 rail profile, but no doubt the range will grow as time progresses. These offer both Insulated frog or Electro frog options in the one point.

If you install a SL-E points which give improved running over the point, then you (especially on a DCC layout) need to add two Insulated Rail Joiners (IRJs) the the points Vee rail ends then add new rail feeds after the IRJs to maintain DCC continual rail power.

[AceinOz]

Great, thanks for the advice.