While building my layout, and acquiring cars and locos, I used to have lots of derailments, and uncouplings. I would juggle the cars around, or put them in a different place in the train. Well, I finally bought a track and wheel guage, and a coupler height gauge. What an eye opener. I was surprised at the large number of cars, ready to run, right out of the box, with wheels out of guage, and couplers at the wrong height. Now, when a car derails or uncouples, I immediately check the wheels and couplers and adjust them on the spot. It took a while, but I don’t have many problems anymore.
Live and learn. It’s always the stuff you take for granted. RTR=Ready To Recheck the RP’s
[#ditto]
Or, as Linn Westcott used to say, “Ready to rework.”
I, personally won’t put anything on the rails that hasn’t been given a thorough inspection, including wheel gauge and coupler height. That includes items being pulled out of storage containers that I’ve owned and run for years.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
The path of enlightenment…
I noticed especially in the Athearn blue box kits, that while the wheels may be in guage, the flanges are too deep, which explains why so many of them bounced over turnout frogs.
Actually the Athearn wheels are .110" just like all the other manufacturers wheels and follows RP25.
If you want semi scale wheels go with the .088" wheels.
If your using Atlas turnouts, run your finger over the frog and you’ll feel why your cars bounce. I took a file to the tops of my frogs to smooth them out and get them even with the rest of the rail. My cars hardly bounce or rock over them now. Made them a lot more quite too.
Don’t forget to get an inexpensive “letter scale” to check the weight of your cars. Lots of cars will be underweight. I use pennies, glued in place with “Alene’s Tacky Glue” available at craft stores. Tacky glue doesn’t attack the plastic and holds dissimilar materials like pennies and plastic together fine. Don’t waste your money on those self-sticking lead weights that cost around 10 cents each. The self-sticking glue dries out over time and the lead weights start to flop around inside your cars. I know because I tried them. Pennies are cheaper and sometimes you only need 1 or 2 at each end of the car.
Hope this helps.
Mondo
Ve git too soon olt and too late schmart!
Remember the line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: “Badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” It always takes awhile for it to sink in but every serious modeler will sooner or later figure out that that track gauge has some value and there is a very finite relationship between wheel and track. It took me awhile to realize it but when I did it was the beginning of the end of frustration.
It’s funny you mentioned that tacky glue. I too used that to glue some weights into cars. Later, I packed the cars away in a box in the hot garage. (the cars were laying on their sides) I took them back out to run them a couple of months later and they kept derailing real bad. Couplers were fine, wheels were in gauge. Drove me nuts! They kept falling over. Took the shell off and discovered the glue had re-liquefied and the weight slid down and was now glued to the side of the shell causing them to tip over. (I don’t use tacky glue anymore)
a cheap source of lead weights are used tire balancing weights you can get at a tire shop. pennies have been made from aluminum for the past several years so you will need to use more of them or just use the older pennies made from copper. by the way, i have read somewhere that it is illegal to use american coins except the way they were intended. defacing them, gluing them together, drilling holes in them and letting trains run over them is against the law. alas doing illegal things in this country is becoming the norm.
A NMRA gauge should be the first tool every model railroader should buy.
I seriously doubt anyone is going to mind or care, or even know, if pennies are used as weight in a model railroad.
That’s exactly what I used to do, until I pulled all cars that showed ANY problem off the track until I fixed them.
If we start enforcing every law, even silly ones like this, the country’s going to need a LOT more jails.
i wrote about defacing of coins as a point of interest. not as a condemnation of lax enforcment of laws. i have glued pennies in my cars, let trains run over and squash them, used them as backup plates for copper rivets and melted them when brazing signal wires to rails. i love pennies. right now i have about $200 in pennies that i have saved over the years and am getting ready to roll up. going to buy 3 atlas locos for my layout.
The nice thing about using pennies is that they are 10 to the ounce, making it a lot easier to bring your car weight to the optimum! Just split the difference and try to center them around the kingpins (over the trucks) If you are off by a penny, add one more to even it out even if it’s a hair over. jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
I have a tender (3 axel trucks) that bounce up at turnout frogs - not so bad to cause a derailment but looks bad. I checked the frogs and then seem level with the rail. If the flanges are too deep - how do you correct? Or wondering if the problem is the first wheels are falling into the frog and cause the back wheels of the truck to jump up?
Check the guard rail opposite the frog, if there is too much play it will allow the wheel to drop into the frog. Use some thin strip styrene to narrow the space between the guard rail and the stock rail. One could also add some strips to the floor of the frog, but this approach usually has mixed results.