My Staging Track 3-way

Here is my proposed use of a 3-way.

 
In this mock-up the carpet represents the interior of the train shed. That 6" wide floor board above the carpet is the wall thickness of the shed. Then the 3-way is mounted inside the external helix housing.

I have some nice Peco ones (pictured), and a couple of nice Roco ones.

Other recommendations?

My experience

is with Shinohara/Walthers 3-way, and Peco C100 3-way.  I would not place the Walthers one anywhere inaccessible; the three I've got will all end up in stub locations where I just push cuts of cars through them, like in a mill yard.  The 3-way Pecos, well, I had three in my old RR in various staging locations.  Two were accessible, one was not.  Guess which one of the three gave me problems?  The derailments in that switch were to the right hand diverging leg (the tighter radius one), and (mostly) occurred as equipment was backed through the turnout.  I suspect it was a result of an undulation in the benchwork below the switch causing a high or low point just when trucks needed guidance, but it's no longer possible to ascertain that for sure, as that benchwork is in the landfill.  When I use them again, I'll be ensuring that 

- the switch is laid completely on a single, flat substructure such as ply,

- all switch paths are properly gauged, and I've extensively tested equipment through it,

before I make it inaccessible - and I'll be trying to avoid that with all switchwork, anywhere.

No experience with any others, sorry.

Blair

Shinohara

My layout is all code 70 and I needed a 3 way in order to have as much room as possible in a yard and the Shinohara 3 way has been working just fine. No derailment problems at all.

I forgot to mention I am

I forgot to mention I am working with Code100 rail, and intend to run DCC so I want to make sure the 3-way has NO electrical discontinuities, or at least ones that can be fixed.

Peco problem?

How can one diverging route on a 3-way be any tighter radius the the opposite one?

Check the frogs

Check the frogs before installing.  In order to power all rail segments you may need to cut some additional gaps

The wiring for dcc group on yahoo has a diagram on how to power the frogs

Above is for the Walthes/Shinahora thurnouts

Howard Garner

I have 1

Brian

If you want a code 100 Shinahora 3 way, I have one you can have. Send me your email address and it is yours. 

Tloc at tds dot net remove the words and add the well u know

TomO

Commercial turnouts

I have a Shinohara code 100

I have a Shinohara code 100 #6 three way which seemed to operate fine (fore-ground in the photo) and then after I built bench work over the top of it, one of the point sets became jammed to on side and would not move - I think the bronze wiper underneath got bent up and caught on the rail.  I ended up having to cut a hole in the bench work above to remove it and fiddle with it to get it to throw properly.

The turnout was under the upper level at in the middle of the 2nd photo and to the back below where that Rustoleum spray saint can is.  Fun!

Another Option?

Brian,

Are you really married to using the 3-way?  From your question, it sounds like you are looking to purchase a new turnout rather than use the one you have pictured, unless of course it turns out to be a product considered by the brain-trust here to be among the "most reliable."

Have you considered how you could do this with standard left and right turnouts, which may be more reliable, rather than using a complicated piece of track work?  Is there enough room to move your first turnout back in to the helix a bit so a second could be installed right after it?  From your sketch, it looks like this may be a possibility.

@Jim,Yes I thought I

@Jim,
Yes I thought I remember you mentioning that you had some sort of a problem with your 3-way

@TomO,
Sent you an email, lets see if it works.
 

I found an older Shinohara  one in my 'stuff', but it turned out to be a brass one. Don't think I want brass down there. These Shinohara's have a tie-strip of metal between their point rails, so I imagine this needs to be eliminated for DCC operation?

One thing I find interesting about the Shinohara is distance between the 'point rail sets'. Seems as though this might result in a smoother, less rail-picking manner?

Not that it matter

to this discussion, but I’m not sure these are actual three-way switch’s. I think a three -way has only one set of points that can be set in three ways. These commercial switch’s all have two sets of points, making them lap switch’s. Or is my imformation outdated?

complicated piece of track work?

@alan,
Never considered these to be that complicated piece of trackwork.

@TomO
That address did not work for me??
I'm at:     railandsail@gmail.com
(with computer security at what it is now, probably half the commerical world knows my address....ha...ha)
 

Sent email

Brian email is sent

TomO

I agree 100% Joe. I've been

I agree 100% Joe. I've been building and using FastTracks exclusively for a decade now and I have never had a rail caused derailment. 

One of these days I will have

One of these days I will have to try out building a turnout,...but right now to many irons in the fire.

Priorities

I certainly understand that situation, but you also need to consider your priorities.

NOTHING, and I repeat nothing will improve your layout operation reliability as much as becoming an expert on turnouts, especially learning to lay them yourself.

If you're dead set against building turnouts, then second best is to learn how to check all parts of a commercial turnout for compliance to the NMRA specs and then learn how to alter them to get them in spec.

When it comes to reliable operation, 99% of your derailments will be at turnouts. If you keep track of your derailments, you will find out *which* turnouts are the worst offenders. If you have learned how to improve commercial turnouts, then you will *know* how to find the problem and fix it.

Bottom line, do not make good turnouts a low priority. Other parts of the hobby can wait if you care about a layout that runs well.

Three way

I have to agree with joel.

I bult some two way and three stub turnouts, 1890 era,  way before buy eyes went bad. They were flawless.

Rich

Commercial Turnouts

@joe,
I have done quiet a bit of reading about turnouts, and even started a few long subject threads on them,...i.e. this one on another forum
Flange-ways in our Turnouts

I had what I thought were some nice turnouts from Fleischmann, but from after doing some research I determined they were not for our trains in the US,...fine for Euro trains, just not ours. Flangeways were the real offender, and that prompted my opening that discussion. I learned a lot there by contributing, and from other contributors. I also looked at a lot of different postings about turnouts on this forum.

Our club has a real old

Our club has a real old Shinohara 3-way and it works fine...no derailments.  I did have to jumper wire 3 of the four point closure rail gaps with 0.010mil (bare) wire because the rail joiners were useless re contact integrity.  There are a few iterations of S 3-ways re one of the frog wing rails.  The wing rail comes close to one of the adjacent rails and the wing rail is "hot" (electrically speaking)...ergo wheel shorting problems.  Mr. Shinohara fixed that problem in some later iterations by insulating the wing rail tip or by gapping the tip.  FYI..our old (uninsulated-ungapped) code 100 gives us no problems now. 

Peco 3-way

Brian, you asked a few days ago why a 3-way turnout would have different radii for each branch. I assume you are interested in HO scale, but as a matter of interest, the N scale Peco code 55 3-way has a 10 deg angle and a 900 mm radius on the left hand branch, while the right hand branch also has a 10 deg angle but a 700 mm radius. That is just the way they are made. Note that the frogs are less than 10 deg because the track extending past the frog (but still part of the manufactured turnout) keeps curving, so the angle is that which a tangent to the end of the curved branch makes with the straight through track.

Some time back I wanted to assure myself exactly what the angles were so I plotted them out in XTrackCad - both branches needed 9 turnouts in a ladder to exactly make a right angle.

Probably not much use to you, but a bit of Peco trivia.

Tony in Gisborne, Australia

3 Way Turnout

I have built two #6 3 way code 83 turnouts using Fast Tracks jigs and they work fine. At the least I would suggest visiting the Fast Tracks web site and take a look at the tutorials and instructions available for the 3 Way turnout. Great stuff and provide lots of support.

Wayne

You asked

"How can one diverging route on a 3-way be any tighter radius the the opposite one?"

Easy.  The Peco 3-way is set up so that each diverging leg exits at an angle 12 degrees relative to the center through track.  Those divergent points are located identically with respect to the entry point.  To do that with identical radii would require that the switch be a true three-way, but these are not.  They form a pair of lapped turnouts.  The right hand diverging leg's points come first, then the right hand points.  With identical exit points and angles, the two turnouts MUST be formed with a different radius.

Blair

Interesting Discussion

I was trying to do a quick review of this 3 way turnout subject this morning and only succeeded in confusing myself again. I must review it in more detail when I have more time.

I did run across this rather interesting discussion that I need to return to, so i reference it here. Seems as though one fellow had it all sorted out firmly in his mind, and with color diagrams, only to be firmly disputed?

3-way point wiring diagram
http://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4494

Quote:

by beast66606 » Thu Jun 21, 2007 1:55 pm

Looking at your photo with circles (ignoring the dots to the left) - the yellow dot sare to a piece of track which is conneced to the two lower switch rails, it is isolated from the frog area by the blue circled break and a break at the frog just to the right - it cannot therefore short as there is no way it can get red power.

The same is true of the area with the two red dots.

So assuming you the breaks are ACTUALLY breaks there is NO short possible.

The green lines are the breaks as in the photo

This may help

Dave

 

I also saw this quote towards the end of that forum discussion....