Not too long ago, I got all of my Walthers Goldline piggyback cars (11 89-foot cars and 8 Front Runners) together for one long piggyback train for a YouTube video that I made (http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/288904.aspx).
Today, I assembled a similar train minus three of the 89-foot cars with the same locomotives. While I had the train running with no issues, it suddenly stopped, and the overload light came on on the transformer. The locomotives and transformer were quite warm so I let them cool down for a little while. I tried starting the train again, and shortly after the train was moving, the overload light started to fade on again. I uncoupled the locomotives from the train, and everything ran normally, indicating that something was up with the train, even though it had appeared to be running normally.
I went to pull the train to the locomotives by hand, and it felt like the whole train was dragging. Granted, I normally don’t have all or almost all of the piggyback cars together in a long train like that. Every car is always inspected for any issues before going on the layout, and at the workbench, each car rolls easily. However, I noticed that the 89-foot cars don’t roll quite as smoothly as the Front Runners, and when I have two or more of the 89-foot cars together and try to roll them, they stop rather quickly. So something is causing the 89-foot cars to not roll very smoothly as I would like them to.
Have you tried truing the troublesome trucks with one of these?
Sometimes there is a burr (or burrs) down inside the journal cone that cause the wheels to bind and not roll freely. The tool isn’t inexpensive but it’s well-worth the expense for good rolling trucks.
You could also try outfitting the trucks with different wheelsets. Some manufactured wheelsets are longer or shorter and work better with certain trucks than others.
Tom’s suggestion of using the truck tuner is a good one (although I do wonder why they didn’t make it double-ended).
It will clean out any burrs or casting anomalies in the plastic trucks, and definitely improves rolling qualities.
This baggage car (formerly a passenger coach) is an older offering from Athearn. It’s a very poor-rolling car, and is shown on a 2.9% grade, held in-place due to the friction in the trucks…
I generally run fairly short passenger trains, so one poor-rolling car usually isn’t an issue. I can’t use the truck tuner on this car because the truck is cast metal, and is rivetted together. I may outfit that car with better trucks, but it’s not a priority.
I’m pretty sure that the truck tuner will solve the issues of your poorly-rolling cars, but it can also improve some cars that roll “okay”, but also could be better. It’s well-worth the cost, and in some cases, can save you from having to buy a whole bunch of high quality trucks if cost becomes an issue.
Sounds like the wheels are contacting either the weight or something else metal. The first time the paint acted as a insulator but finally wore off on the second trip. Allowing the contact and short to occur. The wheels might be the wrong size. Or a .0015 washer might need to be installed to raise the car up. The harder solution, open the car, shorten the weight. Or remove it entirely and weight the trailers( last resort only since it changes your gravity center)
I’ve seen that truck tuner in the mini Micromark catalog that I get from time to time. I’ve thought about getting one, but with everything rolling okay at the workbench, I just kept putting it off. It’ll definitely be a good place to start, and I’ll be ordering one tonight.
I’ll post a follow up on what happens. Thanks for the advice!
I just got a Truck Tuner, some Kadee 36" wheelsets, and some Walthers passenger car trucks over the weekend.
Like you, I had been putting it off for a while.
I replaced the wheels in the Walthers passenger car trucks with Kadees after hitting them with the Truck Tuner. It worked out very well. The Kadee axles fit perfectly and the trucks roll much better.
A double ended cutter would not be a good idea. Having both cutting ends cut/true up the truck bearings could cut unequally. There could be a possibility when you remove the double cutter ended tool, you may scar the newly tuned truck bearings. So one tool end cuts and one ends is smooth is still the best way.
I marked the cutting end with red paint and the smooth end is marked with green paint. Makes a quick color visual of the ends.
If these are the older (White box blue lettering) Walthers piggy-back flat cars, the wheels might also be rubbing on the underside of the car floor. Especially in curves.
Truck tuner will not help if that is also an issue.
I replaced the wheelsets on mine, properly sized, to correct that.
I’m not so sure about that…when I use the truck tuner, I do both sides for both axles on each truck, holding the truck with a thumb and finger on the journal boxes of the journals being tuned . With the light finger-pressure on the journals that are being tuned, the cutting should be similar for each side.
Removing the single-ended tuner could pose a similar risk, too, but I’ve never had that occur - with plastic trucks, it’s easy enough to spread the sideframes for insertion and removal of the truck tuner.
A double-ended one would halve the eight installations and removals needed for one car…not much of an issue if you have only 20 or 30 cars, but if you have several hundred, it would make the process both easier and more efficient.
Just a thought, anyway - mine have pretty-well all been done, and it’s unlikely that I’ll be buying any more rolling stock.
I’m not so sure either, it was just my thinking about a double cutter end tool.
I also tune my truck bearings as you do. That tool was one of my early additions to the build/repair of hunderds of BB and MDC and Accurail ‘‘staple’’ cars for my railroad. BUT only maybe a half dozen at a sitting/build.
I used Kadee wheels with plastic axles in the plastic Walthers passenger truck journals. Would this really help much? They seem really free-rolling now.
Best thing to do would be to mark out a test grade on your railroad or create a ramp on a test bench to see if your cars roll properly as they are. We have a 60" long grade that can be set at various grades. To be used on the layout, a car has to roll the length of the test grade at 2%.
We don’t oil or graphite the axle points. Contemporary Atlas and Walthers trucks pass. So do Intermountain wheels in Accurail trucks, just toname a few examples.
The important thing is not how cars roll, but that all cars pretty much roll the same.
Micro Mark didn’t make the tool correctly? Has anyone tried to tell them?
One advantage of graphite as a lubricant is it isn’t oily and doesn’t pick up contaminants which is one reason it is found in lock lubricants. It does conduct electricity though.
Look, it’s a standard end reamer that has been machined off to one of whatever variety of gauges the tool is made and marketed for. I cannot imagine the fun involved in grinding and finishing accurate cutting edges into that reverse side, let alone rigging up some arrangement of high-ABEC-grade miniature bearings and 5-degree-step ratchets between the ‘business ends’ of two stock reamers. Another ‘improvement’ I’m surprised not to see proposed is to put a threaded joint adjacent to the reaming head, threaded with opposite hand of course, so you could have just one cutter for all the different gauge options.
Not that it couldn’t be done, mind you; just that the cost would be out of all proportion to the time saved or likely the real convenience gained for a ‘representative enough’ group of modelers, even if there weren’t the potential issues with double-end cutting vs. centering that have been brought up.
I still have so few cars that I don’t run into too many problems.
I did, however, check to see if the wheel truck tuner is available for N Scale. I couldn’t find any. I did find an article about it a while back.
Since N Scale is already too small for my clumsy fingers, I’m not sure I’d buy a truck tuner for my layout. However, if I switch to HO, it looks like a tool I would want.
If a plastic truck is tuned well so that it rolls freely then you do not need any sort of lubricant on the journals tips. I’ve never added it to any of my 200+ pieces of rolling stock and they roll quite well.
