I have always tightened the trucks on my cars (HO) to the point where the truck and can turn freely around a curve but not pivot from side to side. A member of my club pointed out to me that you should allow your trucks to pivot somewhat from side to side. I have never had trouble with my cars but what is the rule of thumb to follow when tightening the screw that holds the truck in place?
make sure with a light tap the trucks can turn from right to left and i even allow the trucks to go up and down a littel bit, make sure it can freely turn in just about any direction with out stiffness, not sure about side too side never heard about that
If you have rigid trucks, they should pivot. If you have sprung Kadee trucks you actually should tighten them so that they just turn but do not pivot. Sprung and equalized trucks will track by themself according to your track geometry.
All of my rolling stock has sprung trucks and it tracks awesome. I have yet to have a derailment ever since I moved to a new house 10 month ago.
wow i wish i ahd that luck on my old layout hopefully im that lucky on my newer layout im jsut beging too start
If you just start I suggest you get a couple of sprung trucks and try them on some of your cars. Once you realize that cars with sprung trucks are a lot more forgiving to track imperfections (as they should just like the prototypes) you’ll never want to run rigid plastic trucks. There is a reason real railroads have always had sprung and equalized trucks on all of their rolling stock 
For what it’s worth, I agree here. The trucks need to be able to rock a little from side to side. Sprung trucks have that built into them through the springs, but the the car weight needs to be correct for this also. Ken
I agree with having some slight rocking motion, however I only let one truck be loose enough to rock sideways, the other should only be free to swivel. The reasoning for this is to allow for the wheels to follow any uneven trackwork yet not have a wobbley car.
[#ditto]
One swivels the other pivots and swivels. It works very well on most cars and (non-sprung) wheelsets.
larak and Robert Knapp have it right! Both trucks shouls swivel to negotiate curves but only one should be loose enough to accomodate verticle anamolies in the track. If both are loose the car will rock on straight and level track, w/ one truck tightened the car will remain vericle on properly lined track.
larak and Robert Knapp have it right! Both trucks shouls swivel to negotiate curves but only one should be loose enough to accomodate verticle anamolies in the track. If both are loose the car will rock on straight and level track, w/ one truck tightened the car will remain vericle on properly lined track.
The key to good tracking is the three-legged stool principle. Properly equalized, a car or loco should have two suspension points at one end that are opposite each other and centered over the rails. On the other end, there should be a single suspension point half way between the rails. Prototypically equalized steam locos and cars with one rigid and one rocking truck meet this criterion. Cars with two rigid trucks that don’t rock will find any defect in the trackwork, then mark it in an unmistakeable manner (especially if open-topped with a loose load!)
Since I haven’t used prototypically-sprung trucks, I can’t address their effectiveness. The old (ancient) Varney sprung trucks I once owned were so tightly sprung they might as well have been rigid.
I will admit that unsprung, long-wheelbase 4-wheel freight cars are a great incentive to accurate tracklaying.
Chuck
One truck “tight.”
The other truck “loose.”
Both should swivel easily when you have it right, but like the last few posters have mentioned, the ability to have some sideways “slop” on ONE end of the car is what makes the tripod principle work.
There is some experimentation going on in narrow gauge with bolsters that involves building in different “wedges” at each bolster – one end side to side and the other end is end to end, as I recall – to achieve an improved version of the “tripod” arrangement.
Having a set of trucks that are sprung so that they follow the track better definitely improves tracking and lessens derailments, as well as having consistent weighting, even if you’re not quite up to NMRA spec… Kadee has a justifiable reputation in HO, but there are a few others. The new HOn3 trucks that MTL is putting under their C&S reefers have gotten very good reviews of late, if you want a good example of how this is supposed to work. Getting the springing just right is crucial, as it takes very little spring in order to work properly in HO. I’ve seen kits from the 60s and 70s with “sprung” trucks that had springs in them that I doubt would compress if you filled an HO car with 1:1 cement. But they looked cool at the time.
[B)]
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Exactly right. Eack truck should pivot with one truck having some slack to rock slightly.
I use the: “one truck just pivots and the other truck rocks” approach as well. This provides a kind of three-point tracking so the car can take rough spots in the track easily, but also keeps the car from rocking as it goes down the track.
I have found fully sprung trucks – while in theory should track over imperfections well – generally have too much spring or not enough spring, so they tend to derail more that solid sideframe trucks. Sprung trucks either track great or they track like crap with very little in between.
Since I can control the tracking of a car with good precision using the three-point truck screw method above, I get more consistent performance from my rolling stock if I ditch the sprung trucks.
Thank heavens! I’m not the only one. I also had more derails with sprung trucks. Gave up on 'em.
You don’t wanna know how many disasters I’ve had with those devili***hings. The ones I had were made by Walther’s and never did work right. I finanly pitched them in '85.
I tighten my trucks till they can’t turn…I then back the screw off 1 and 1/2 turns…This works quite well and superior to the so called 3 point system and above all your car will be derailment free with proper track work.
Thanks for all your inputs, fellows. I have learned something very useful as a result. I recently bought a logging skeleton car with three real thick twigs on it, and the trucks are both sprung. I have no others like that. But this thing will NOT stay on the tracks! So, I may fool with the tightness, or swap out one truck and allow it to pivot only…whatever, I now understand how to tune it.
-Crandell
Walthers trucks, as those other wetal one’s are nowhere near as good as KD. KD’s have tough springs, that I totally agree. But still the only time I have cars derail is if I screwed the trucks and screw went in not perfectly straight and thus truck is skewed too.
For those who have the Accurail cars that use plastic pins to secure the trucks, getting a good adjustment on them is nearly impossible. I have several that I couldn’t get tight enough to keep the cars upright on curves and they would wobble all the time. I finally just replaced the bottoms of the cars with Athearn bottoms with screwed in trucks. End of problem.