After about a 10 year hiatus from the hobby, I have been very impressed by how free rolling some of the new RTR equipment is compared to my old rolling stock which is comprised of primarily Athearn BB and Roundhouse kits. Since I plan to run 25-30 car trains up a 1.75 grade, free rolling wheels are very important. I have replaced the wheel sets on some of the old cars with P2K metal wheels and lubed the ends of the axles and that has helped some but still has not brought the old stuff up to the standards of the new rolling stock. I have concluded that the difference must be in the trucks. If I am going to go to the expense of replacing the trucks, I would like to know what characteristics I should look for in trucks and if there are any brands that would be particularly good.
I have devised a test for judging how well my cars actually roll. It is similar to the Stimp meter test used by golf tournaments to judge the speed of their greens. I purposely made the downhill side of my double track main slightly steeper than the uphill side which I judge to be about 2%. I simply place the car at the top of this grade and release it. It rolls downgrade for about 14 feet bottoming out at the end of a curve entering about a 16 foot straightaway along my end wall. The best of my new rolling stock will roll all the way through the straight away section into the curve on the opposite wall. I have arbitrarily decided that to get a passing grade, a car must roll at least to the depot located about halfway down the end wall straightaway. Most of my old cars don’t make it that far.
Before you start replacing all of your trucks, buy The Tool by Micro Mark. This is a reaming tool to reshape the truck to conform to the needle points on the axles. Costs about $10 and makes a big difference.
Cool idea. I guess I was sort of doing that but the standards you have devised are useful. Now - how do we get our old rolling stock up to standards without replacing all the trucks??
P2K replacement trucks are a very good choice for older rolling stock. They have a truck type called a Sprung Plankless with 33" wheels that goes well on older rolling stock.
Kato and Kadee make some nice wheel sets. You can also try reaming out the axle ends with one of those tools found online or your LHS. Just be careful, cause if you take out too much plastic, lots of end play is the result
Kato makes wheelsets with the spinning roller bearing. They are quite neat and roll really good. Kadee make metal wheel sets both sprung and unsprung. While the spung sets are not a free rolling as the unsprung, the sprung are more forgiving on questionable track.
I use “The Tool” myself and it is about the best $10 I have ever spent. Even with the slightest grade your cars probably won’t sit still. Even some of the newer trucks could use a run through with that thing. I can think of better things to spend the money on than having to replace all those perfectly good trucks.
I always find this topic interesting and everyones answer is always entirely the opposite to what I do. I have numerous long runs with grades in the 2 to 2-1/2 percent grade range. When running down-grade, I always had problems with the engines bucking with a train of free rolling cars - the engines drive would bunch up and run out causing a nasty jerking action. My solution was to tighten up all the wheel-sets so they would still roll, but not freely. By doing this, the engines are always pulling on the cars - even down-grade. This completely eliminated bunching up the engines drive. I also found it made using Kadee uncoupling magnets much more reliable as the car wouldn’t roll away from the engine in the delayed position and recouple itself. In addition to this modification, all my cabooses wheel-sets are set even tighter to ensure the slack is always pulled out. After ten years of operation, I’ve yet to have to replace any trucks due to excessive wear from the tighter adjustment.
Mark R, I like your train of thought. The club layout we are building in my basement (my money their effort) has a no-lix that is 2 1/2% that if we ran a max length train for the layout , 40cars, that would be a down hill problem for sure. The new cars that I have will not stay on a .25% grade without moving.
we are trying to get this monster to a test stage so we can realy test things.
If I did not have their help I would have built it 1/3rd the size.
How did you tighten up the trucks? Just the old pinch in the ends?
claycts - Yup, that’s pretty much it. Bend the side-frames inward, reinstall the wheel-set, test, repeat. I set each one so it turns easily with finger pressure but will not spin freely on its own.
I have a friend who has a large “flat-land” layout and he’s always carrying on about how well his cars roll. Well, one time he brought over his prized engines and about 20 of his super free-rolling cars to show off. When coming down a long 2% grade, the engines began bucking violently from all the weight being pushed against them from all those super free-rolling cars !!! LOL.
Ever since that episode, no “foreign” road freight is allowed to operate on the layout during an operating session.
Mark:
Two possible solutions to “bucking Broncos”: 1. Take wire and wrap around the axels of your trucks on some of your cars: and 2. Buy some Accurail kits.
If you read this month’s Model Railroader review of their hopper car, you will note that they are equipped with solid plastic axels. These will not roll very freely.
One caveat . If these cars are far back in a long train, you run the risk of stringing the train around a sharp curve, so you have to be careful about fast starts when you add drag to a long train.
Leon - We experience no operating problems providing we use MY rolling stock and not any brought in from outside sources. All my rolling stock has metal wheels on plastic axles and ALL have been “tightened” up equally. We have experienced no problems what-so-ever from “clothes-lining” due to someone being a little anxious on the throttle. I think this is due to the fact that ALL the cars have equal rolling resistance. I can see where problems can arise if there is a mix of cars with a high rolling resistance and those that are very free rolling. Before any car goes on my layout, it goes through a typical test list including coupler height, trip pin height AND proper rolling resistance of each axle. By ensuring each car is set properly, I can honestly say we have had zero operation problems caused by the “snug” trucks.
Another benefit to the tightened wheel-sets I’ve forgotten to mention … we have numerous switching areas which require leaving the tail of the train on the main while switching the head end. Often times, the tail of the train needs to “wait” on a grade. Before we went to the method of tightening up the trucks, there was no way this was possible without “grounding” the lead car to prevent it from rolling away ! With the tightened wheel-sets, the cars can be left on a grade unattended and not roll back down the main to the other end of the room !!!
What it sounds like to me there is a trade off with free rolling wheels. Good for going upgrade because of less resistance but not so good with long trains going down grade because the lack of resistance will increase the weight being pushed on to the front of the train. I would think that there should be a happy medium. I want to be able to run 25-30 car freights in both directions. Early tests runs on my grade showed even my largest steamer, a BLI 4-8-2 stalled with a 25 car freight halfway up the grade. This train had a mix of the stiff older cars and the free rolling new ones. So far, I have had none of the buckling problems going down grade but something I may need to be concerned with if I make all my equipment free rolling.
I have never heard of this “bucking” issue being a problem before. I think it has something more to do with that particular layout. It was stated that you should ONLY run equipment tuned for that layout on that layout.
I have 2% grades with maximum train lengths of 16 cars inclduing caboose and all stock has highly free-rolling wheels. No problems experienced with downgrade “bucking”. Mark, how long are your trains? Others, is there anyone else who has experienced this bucking?