You’re probably right, Jim, except I’d bet it would be the same with FastTrak. My layout is uneven because it’s built on 1 inch foam boards laid upon 10 by 29 ft. of rocks that I couldn’t grade. So the boards go a bit up and down. Now the rock is all covered by an anti-radon tarp that adds to the bulk… But I like it: the train noise; jockeying the throttle on the subsequent minor grades - and 027 curves, especially the quasi-super-elevated curves in the corners of the layout.
Brian, you’re absolutely right - some of my very cheap and old K-line cars were practically unmanageable - too tall, too light and too wobbly. Focusing on syncing down the truck and getting rid of the wobble made 'em much better.
I checked out my MPC beer reefer, per Brianel’s suggestion. There’s a plastic pronged insert that holds the truck to the chassis and the truck wobbles like crazy. It is hard to pull the body off. There is a tab at each end of the car that you have to depress to get the roof and ends (one piece) off. I didn’t mess with it as I don’t want to break the plastic. But I’d sure like to put a screw in there vice that wobbly plastic fastener. What were they thinking?
Even with perfect track, cars will derail if you put lots of heavy ones behind lots of light ones. One I have to run some very light cars ahead of heavy ones, I toss in a few large nuts and bolts and close the doors (or whatever method is applicable to the cars involved). The difference in derailments is quite obvious. I don’t bother much with the NMRA guidlines, though I suppose my ad hoc efforst produce results not too much different from the often recommended 16 ozs for O cars.
I have added weight to some of my tenders so that my locomotive can pull a longer frieght train, I stuck a magnet or two to the bottom of the tender, once I had to open the tender and add the weight.
Lee