I finally got a scale to weigh my rolling stock and bring them up to NMRA standards. I tried to access the standards on NMRA’s website but the RP for car weights has been unavailable for over a week. Can anyone post the standards here or point me to a website that has them?
For HO, 1 ounce plus half an ounce per inch of car length.
They’re there on the site. Just go back and open up the PDF next to it
Jeffers_mz is correct however.
I thought they were just NMRA reccommendations?? Using their scale passenger cars are entirely too heavy, IMHO.[:)]
[#ditto]
At the club we call NMRA weighted passenger trains the “lead loads”.
When you are running a 17-18 car passenger train, with some brass mixed in, it just gets to be entirely too much.
First off these are NOT standards. They are Recommended Practices. That means they DO NOT HAVE to be followed. I personally don’t follow them either. I believe an engineer on the model has to deal with the same problems as a prototype engineer in regards to weight and load problems. It makes you develop a more prototypical train handling skill. Very few of my cars are weighted to NMRA specs. I believe that it is more of a function of the center of gravity of the car and truck/wheel quality than weight.
a problem I’ve found with cars below this weight recommended practice is that they’ll “clothesline” if you run long trains. This even on 36 inch radius curves. If some are weighted and some not, keep the heavier ones at the front of the train.
BTW, the new Walther’s Superliner cars are slightly ABOVE the weight recommended in RP 20.1, but they’re a free rolling car. One Athearn P42 will pull an 11 car train on a 2% grade, 36 inch radius without a problem. But get rid of those crappy EZ Mate couplers and put in Kadee metal ones, or you’ll have other problems.
My very light cars like flats and gondolas are very prone to derailing especially at the throat to my yard where they have to negotiate an S curve through the turnouts. Some of my box cars fall into that category too. When these are in the middle of the train with weighted cars in front and back, I can almost counting on them jumping the rails at some point. I want to be able to place my cars where they would logically be according to their destination. I don’t want to have to worry about their weight when I place them into the train.
To add weight to my flats & gondolas I glue small lead shot to the underside of the cars. I do this by turning car upside down, pour the shot into the open areas of the frame, then glue it with white glue just as i would when gluing ballast.
Guys,If you must weigh your cars throw away the long outdated RP20.1 and design your own weight system where the cars will be EQUAL in weight.
Think of this…A 50’ boxcar will weigh less then a 60 foot boxcar or 57 foot reefer and so on .Then you start seeing a highly unequal car weight system that will cause problems including cars string lining because the weight system is BASED on car length…
Food for thought…If you have unrealistic steep grades your engine’s pulling power will be cut due to the added weight of the cars…
If you are not having problems then why add the unnecessary weight? [?]
My experience is that when there is a signifant disparity in car weights, you will have trouble. It may not be necessary to have the cars exactly at NMRA standards but I think they should all be close. When a very light car is place mid train, it gets squeezed by the heavier cars behind it pushing it into the heavier cars in front of it. When that happens, the wheels tend to get lifted off the rails. I’ve also seen the rear truck of my underweighted cabooses come up off the rails when negotianing the turnouts in my yards.
When a car derails, it is in most cases bad track or a bad car. If the same car is derailing at different points, than the problem is probably with the car (i.e. bad weight, out of gauge wheels, poor coupler swing etc.). If more than one car is derailing at the same point, it is probably bad track or it might be all the cars have the same flaw such as underweighting. My first instinct is to check the car. Wheel gauge, coupler height and swing, weight. If it is within tolerances, then I check out the track.
I have found that if I use the NMRA standards on freight cars they are less prone to derailing. As noted by others the weights for passenger cars is a bit high. I add weight to them and keep them about equal but no where near th NMRA standard. They are running together not in a mixed train usually and therefore do not have problems. They are only guidelines not rules.
I don’t put much emphesis on the “NMRA” weight standard, I’ve found that these standards are just too light especially when switching rolling stock around or running very long trains, i’ve found that cars 12-16 ounces are better than the 4-9 ounce cars. …the wheels won’t pop off the track when they are getting backed into a spur or siding or derail in the middle of the train in a long train…I have a lot of hoppers that are 16 ounce + and they run great…I did take off the plastic trucks and installed metal trucks instead…makes all the difference in the world…my suggesting is to run heavier rolling stock (within reason that is) and switch to all metal trucks…chuck