After collecting locomotives and cars for many years and displaying them in a case I decided to make them track ready for my new layout. I will be upgrading the couplers from hook and horn to Kadee, which I hear are the best. I would like to add metal wheels to all of them for extra weight and better tracking.
I have accumulated over the years approximately 80 passenger cars and 140 freight cars and a few older diesels and I am not Donald Trump so money is a consideration.
What is your opinion on the best replacement wheel sets on the market?
as long as they are metal wheels i’d go with Atlas, intermountain, and kato trucks…KADEE makes a metal truck but it has real suspension bolster springs in it and to me, they are too flimsy and cause the rolling stock to whobble …i don’t use Kadee trucks but love their couplers
I like Intermountains best. Proto 2000 and Kadee are good too, but the Intermountains have metal wheels and axles, so they can’t be bent out of shape as easily. I got a P2K car not too long ago, and the wheels roll very well, but one of the axles is bent slightly, causing it to wobble slightly. The Kadee wheels have a black laquer or paint or something instead of actually being blackened.
I’ve also used LBF wheelsets and like them a lot (available at www.cchobbies.com - maybe other places as well, but this is the only one I know of). They have metal wheels and axles and are comparable in price to the P2K’s. Only problem is the color, which is kind of a tarnished brass color. If you’re going to weather your cars anyway, may not be an issue. Personally, it doesn’t bother me that much.
I haven’t tried the Intermountain semi-scale wheels yet, mostly because of the price, but they would definitely be more realistic-looking.
I just replace the entire truck with Kadee sprung trucks. I think they derail less than rigid frame trucks. But that’s a more expensive option - roughly $5 per car to make that switch.
I always use 33" LL2K wheel metal sets. I converted to metal wheel sets early on in my MRR life. I bought a CN caboose by Athearn. I couldn’t believe the difference in how smoothly it rolled compared to the few other pieces of rolling stock I had at the time (which had plastic wheel sets). Then I started reading how metal will also keep your track cleaner. It seemed a no brainer to me, so I bought several packages of LL2K 33" wheels and haven’t looked back since. Now, whenever I buy a new piece of rolling stock I always replace the wheels right away if they aren’t metal.
Rather than individual axles, I’ve been replacing the whole trucks with Atlas trucks, they really run smooth and free. Of course the cost is about $4 per car but then, what the heck [:o)]
I like the Intermountain because both the wheels and the axles are metal. I believe P2K’s have plastic axles. I would not bother with the Intermountains with the bearings. Very expensive without significantly better performance. I would like to try Rebox(sp?). I saw them at a show and they looked pretty good.
I have used Kadee, Proto, and Reboxx. I prefer the 88 wheelsets from Reboxx. They run great and look so much better. I also use there tool in all my trucks. I would recommend using the Reboxx T-100 Exxact Socket Tool on all your trucks before you put the new axles in.
Branchline sells wheelsets also. Check eBay and look up nstars, Bessemer Hobbies. Bill sells there wheelsets.
Good Luck.
i’ve used kd and proto wheelsets for years in various mfgs. trucks and they all work well.i recently tried a package of 33in intermountain wheelsets and they are much more free rolling than the others i have mentioned.i beleive the intermountain can be had for around a$65 or close to that for 100 wheelsets.regardless of which mfg you choose for your wheelsets, with the aid of the tool any mfg wheelset should work very well.(not sure about atlas wheelsets in other mfg trucks though) terry…
The Reboxx semi-scale wheels are difficult to beat. Standard wheels from Life Like and others are far too wide to look prototypical (although I do like the casting marks on the Proto wheelsets). The semi-scale width wheels from Reboxx look much better than the standard width, and are very reliable running wise. I have tried some of the Reboxx true scale width wheels as well, and again the appearance is amazing but the operations side of things degrades quickly on less than perfect trackwork.
First, I would measure the axles on the cars that you have now with vernier calipers. Then measure the ones that you want to use at your LHS. Some manufacturers’ axles are slighty longer, which will make the car not roll very easily. I used to do computer work at a plating company, and probably the blackened wheels you are seeing from Atlas may be black oxide coating. It’s a process that, unlike paint, is pretty much permanent. This is important because unlike paint, it will still conduct electricity, which is what you want should you have cars with interior lighting.
By the way, if the length of the axles is only slighly longer (within a few thousandths of an inch), you can deepen the axle journals in the trucks with a tool that’s available from Micro Mark.