I have been swapping out the trucks and wheelsets on my rolling stock for about 3-4 months now, and have had a lot of fun and challenges in the process. Many of the trucks have been picked up on eBay, and are of sometimes questionable ancestry. I have Varney, Athearn, Silver Streak, Ulrich, Central Valley, and of course, some Kadee. By far the best-rolling ones are the Kadee. While I like free-rolling trucks, I have not been terribly concerned about it, if they don’t fly down the track with every breeze, since I have a 0% ruling grade, and short trains. Even so, my little MDC Harriman Connies can haul 25-30 cars without blinking, even with them all weighted to NMRA standards (that’s around 7 pounds of cars).
Since I run DC, I haven’t any knowledge of how everything would work on DCC. A number of my cars have metal underframes, but I’ve experienced no problems unless I get a truck swiveled around so that it shorts out through the car frame. Almost all the trucks have wheelsets with only one wheel insulated, which means that with metal truck frames, you have to be very careful to get both insulated wheels on the same side of the truck, or bad things happen! [xx(]
One of my key concerns has been to reduce the side-to-side wheel slop in the trucks. It can be a very annoying problem when trying to line up the couplers while picking up or dropping off cars, or while switching in the yard. This means I have to experiment with almost every truck I convert. The Reboxx charts are helpful, but not the final word in all cases. Apparently the quality control wasn’t always very uniform back in the day. (Funny, we used to think it was pretty
Gary, I understand this concern and did consider that part of the problem. Almost all of mine are Kadee sideframes. I have a few other brands from back in the day (I’ve been at this hobby since 1967), but if the perfromance isn’t good, I retire them. I find that the Kadee/Intermountain trucks, even with the greater sideplay, center themselves quite well simply by gravity and their free rolling nature. I will admit I have broad curves, 36" radius and above, and large turnouts, #6 and above, all code 83 Atlas except fro a few special pieces hand layed.
I also use ONLY Kadee regular head couplers, NO semi scale couplers. My test of those little critters also lead me to reject them. First is the issue we are discussing - gathering range. Even with tighter trucks like you are going for, the possible side play built into the NMRA track standards in more than the gathering range of the semi scale couplers. Second, because they are desgined to be compatable with the standard head, and other brands, the knuckle, while smaller in width, is actually deeper longways and has more train slack action. This is important for me, my operating conditions are different from yours. I run long trains, 30-50 cars, and I have grades, but all are 2% or less - so the added slack action is not good. I also found semi scale couplers to not couple as smoothly with the regular ones. So this is another one of those issues - if you can’t change them all, I would rather not
PFE was by far the largest consumer of the T section Bettendorf, this particular Bettendorf design was banned by the ICC in 1942 due to cracks developing where the journel boxes joined the T- section, PFE obtained yearly waivers to continue usage until the fleet was finally upgraded by 1952.
Now THAT is a fact I didn’t know. Thanks. I have a number of those in HO and never could figure out where they belonged!
According to one of John Nehrich’s books (with lots of info from Richard Hendrickson), arch bar trucks were finally banned from interchange in 1941. Fox trucks were never officially banned, possibly because they had all fallen apart by the 1940’s. Andrews and Vulcan trucks both were delivered new, with new journal boxes. After the arch bar truck was banned, some of the salvaged journals could have been re-used in Vulcan or Andrews sideframes. The more common type of Andrews had horizontal braces to the bottom of the journal, and I believe Accurail has made those in one-piece plastic. The Kadee version is of pre-WWI design. According to Nehrich, nearly 9% of the US freight car fleet still had arch bar trucks in 1939; the ban took effect in 1941.
The elusive Dalman two-level freight car truck was distinguished by four coil springs on each side, not the usual pair. I have a few made from Eastern Car Works kits, which are styrene assemblies without equalization. Mine work OK, usually, as I shimmed and braced the bolsters.
Arch bars were considered obsolete among builders when wooden frame and truss rods were supercecded by steel in the mid teens , railroads retained them service to avoid the expense associated with new truck assemblies and the cost associated with modifying the frame (when possible).
The Fox truck yet still lives, the largest fleet resides under the remaining SP-now UP Rotary fleet, SP modified and overhauled all in the seventies to include roller bearings.