MTH V&T Loco Pickup Roller Dropping into Switches

Joe, looks like your using MTH Realtrax. Does your center metal rails have the plastic extensions, like pictured? If they do, your pickup roller is falling off the edge. Make sure your pickup rollers are as close to being centered, between the wheel flanges, as possible. Sometime the roller arms get bent off center when the engine is push down into the Styrofoam packaging. Just carefully push the roller back to center and make sure the roller screw is tight.

Dave Zucal posted:

Joe, looks like your using MTH Realtrax. Does your center metal rails have the plastic extensions, like pictured? If they do, your pickup roller is falling off the edge. Make sure your pickup rollers are as close to being centered, between the wheel flanges, as possible. Sometime the roller arms get bent off center when the engine is push down into the Styrofoam packaging. Just carefully push the roller back to center and make sure the roller screw is tight.

Dave, thanks!! I will give that a try today and let you know! 

Dave Zucal posted:

Joe, looks like your using MTH Realtrax. Does your center metal rails have the plastic extensions, like pictured? If they do, your pickup roller is falling off the edge. Make sure your pickup rollers are as close to being centered, between the wheel flanges, as possible. Sometime the roller arms get bent off center when the engine is push down into the Styrofoam packaging. Just carefully push the roller back to center and make sure the roller screw is tight.

Dave - some follow-up:

1. You were right! The pickup roller had fallen out of alignment. Realigning it and tightening the screw helped a lot. 

2. I did end up adding a small piece of guard rail from a defunct switch into that small open space. 

And ... BOOM! The loco doesn't derail anymore!

Thanks for the help!

Joe 

Great news Joe. Glad to help.