I added a row of A-Line 1/2 ounce lead weights to a Walthers Amfleet coach. With the lead weights added to the coaches, each one now weighs about 1 pound. Is that too much weight for a 12 car train being pulled by one Acela HHp-8 locomotive?
I’m not sure about the pulling power of your loco, but according to the NMRA, in RP 20.1, your coaches should be weighted as follows: 1 ounce plus 1/2 ounce for every inch of length. If the coach is 10 inches long, it should, therefore, weigh 6 ounces (1 + (.5 x 10)). And no, I am not a NMRA expert or anything, but you can find all of the NMRA Standards and Recommended Practices FREE at the NMRA web site. Hope this helps in some small way.
Kevin
1 pound? all I can say is Yikes! I assume your modeling HO scale. There is no question you would burn up that locomotive in a very short time.Here is a link to the NMRA website now it’s not critical that you get the cars to weigh exactly the amount specified so if you over or under a tad thats ok. If you don’t have a accurate balance aka scale you can pick up one in Radio shack or online for around $25 give or take. I keep a copy of the NMRA chart tacked up on the back of my work bench for reference but I picked up a neat idea. I have apiece of wide masking tape about 12" long with the 1:87 scale lengths of 40’-50’-85’ etc. marked off with a sharpie and in the space the suggested weight that length car should be. As a practice when ever I buy new rolling stock before it even hits the rails I check the coupler heights, check to see if the wheels are in gage with my NMRA gage, tune the trucks with my truck tuning tool from Micro Mark and then weigh and adjust each car if necessary to it’s suggested weight. Then they are ready to hit the pike.
Your biggest problem with a 12-pound train isn’t the pulling power of the locomotive (you can always add more units), but the fact that cars that heavy will wear out the trucks much faster. If your trucks have plastic sideframes, then the axle holes will quickly become elongated, resulting in body wobble and derailments. Even metal axles in metal sideframes will wear out faster. Lose about 10 ounces per car. They will still track very well, and you won’t have a problem with excess wear.
Besides, with a extremely heavy train like that, the fact that there are no brakes on the cars can become a real problem going down grades, particularly the extreme grades we use in model railroading.[:O]
Alloboard, yep as others have said that is over kill. You can save some money by get wheel weights at a NAPA store.
Cuda Ken
As everyone else has indicated, one pound of weight per car is not only overkill, it will almost surely damage the motor pulling that much weight.
The first question that comes to mind is why you added that much weight. Was it progressive, one lead weight at a time? Or, did you just decide that a lot of weight needed to be added for performance reasons and so you added one pound all at once?
Tell us more about the perceived need to add weight and we can better advise you.
Rich
I went to a local garage/gas station and asked if I could have the old wheel weights they take off car wheels whenever they balance the tires or change a tire. I got 3/4 of a 5-gallon spackling bucket of lead wheel weights for free. I still have 1/3 of that bucket left over and I have a lot of freight cars. I also bought a 25 lb. bag of lead shot and I use that in covered hoppers and in low-profile cars like gons and flats. The lead shot can be smashed flat and fit in very small areas. Jeff
One pound is more weight than is necessary, but it will make that train roll very prototypically. [;)] I had a train of Rivarossi smooth-sided cars that I ballasted to just under a pound each and they tracked beautifully, with no wiggle, shimmy, or other unrealistic movements. I eventually scaled-back on the weight, though, as the plastic sideframes (plain styrene, I believe, not Delrin) wouldn’t have stood up too long.
Just as an aside, most of that weight was fastened to the underside of the roof, and there was never any danger of those cars flipping over, as long as the train was operated at prototypical speeds.
Also, pulling heavy trains is very unlikely to damage any good-quality loco, although if the wheels are slipping excessively, you’ll eventually wear off the plating. However, if your loco is equipped with traction tires, it can be damaged by use on an overly-heavy train. Think of wheel slip as a safety device - it’s telling you that you need another loco (or two), providing a good excuse to shop for a “needed” new loco. [swg]
Wayne
I’ve used roofers lead.
For H0 I use the NMRA RP. But for Hon3 this seems too much. Many friends suggest only about 70%.
Wolfgang
Here is a link to the NMRA’s recommended practice for weighting cars.
Another thing that is affected is the couplers, especially if you have plastic or non-kadee’s. The loco’s wheels will probably slip quite a bit on even the slightest incline.
I have 8 Walthers Superliners that weigh in at roughly 10 ounces a pieces. I also have an 85’ baggage car that weighs in at 7 ounces. The Athearn P42s pull the whole train on 0% grade without much trouble.
You also need to lube the journals in the side frames of the Walthers trucks.
What is Wheel Weights?
Ok lets start with this. Lets say a typical passenger car weighs about 100,000 pounds when geared down to HO scale which is 1:87th, how much will the coach weigh in HO scale? First of all I decided that a lot of weight will increase performance and I think that passenger coaches should have weighed more that they currently do. I added 12 1/2 ounce A-Line lead weights to every car.
If you bring 100,000lb. down to HO scale, each car would only weigh about 2.43oz. The NMRA’s standards are the best things you can follow when it comes to performance, which means passenger cars 10-12" long should weigh 6 to 7oz. Too much weight will cause excess friction in the bearings, wearing them out quicker and increasing the load on the engine. Too little weight will cause problems with traction and derailing. And adding A Line weights can get very expensive, considering they charge more than a dollar per ounce of lead.
Wheel weights are pieces of metal that are stuck to car wheels to balance them. Using those would probably be cheaper than getting A Line lead all the time. You could probably even get lead shot BBs and use them.
alloborad, Yes the weight you have added to your train cars is way more then needed. Look at the link to the NMRA for the standards that they recommend. They are the experts of our hobby and have been doing it a long tine. We are trying to help, as the others have said. The standard recommended weight is 1 ounce plus 1/2 ounce for every inch of length. So a six inch long car would be ( 1 ounce + ( 6 x 0.5 = 3 ) = 9 ounces total weight for that car. Myself I like my cars to ride smooth but there is more then just getting the weight right. You should pickup an NMRA track gauge it well help when you want to check your car wheel for wheel to wheel spacing along with the gauge (width) of your track. As you seen new please search the forum to find how to turn-up your cars for maximum performance. (IE balance and rolling ease along with flexibility). Once again we are trying to point you the right way and anytime you wish our input please post again.
BTW please look at the post counts of the posters the higher the number of posts the longer that person has been helping here.
You mean 4oz? (1 + 3 = 4)