Well, i bought three “experiment” train cars for my track the other day, and when i got home from the shop i notices the wheels were plastic. It ran for a bit and the the plastic wheeled train cars would get derailed on the switches. The cars sometimes go over, and sometimes don’t. I was wondering if i bought metel wheels and put them on the train cars, it might go over the switched better. Thanks in advance =)
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Some of the older plastic wheels had bigger flanges. These were sometimes called pizza cutter wheels. About all of your metal wheels today will have correct wheels. You didn’t say what brand of cars so I can’t tell which is the best brand as a replacement. Intermountain and Reboxx are good in HO scale. Reboxx has different axle lengths to accomodate a variety of different manufacturers.
Hope this helps.
Make sure your wheels are in gauge. Check them with an NMRA gauge.
Also make sure there is no flashing on the wheels.
Enjoy
Paul
Thanks! I have an HO scale, and the brand is Industrial Rail and they were freight cars, if that helps any, but thank you!
I’ve had plastic wheels that did the same thing you describe. Just because they are in gauge doesn’t make them right. Are they in the right place on the axle? if the wheels are over to one side by even a bit it will force the truck against the rail and cause a derailment on the first thing it snags, usually a turnout, crossover, etc.
Ok, thanks for the information, i will check for that next time =)
assuming your track work is up to snuff, it wouldn’t matter if the wheels were platinum if they were out of gauge or allignment. also the trucks themselves must be able to rotate freely on the king pins and have a little rocking ability or you will have problems.
no doubt replacing poor quality or mediocre plastic wheelsets with metal ones will improve operation but so will replacing them with good plastic wheels.
speaking from long experience with a fleet of over 450 cars at least half of them have plastic wheels on brass axles and they cause me no problems what so ever.
i have nothing against metal wheels and they do usually roll pretty good. some guys like the sound effect they get with metal wheels too. but, i think the benefits of replacing all plastic wheels with metal ones is over rated.
sure the guys who make and sell them will play cheerleader for that kind of thinking but the truth does not serve their agenda.
quality control seems to be a bit better with the metals wheel sets and you don’t find too many of them that are out of round or out of gauge.
i have not noticed any problems with dirty track from plastic wheels either and i run a lot of long trains.
just my opinion, experience will dictate your own.
grizlump
I agree with griz: just because the wheels are plastic doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re at fault. If you are able to eliminate all of the other potential causes of trouble which he listed, then by all means, try replacing the wheels, either with plastic ones or metal - either should give equally satisfactory results.
Wayne
Sometimes the cost of metal wheels will eat you alive. If your weight is not up to par, switch and other track work up to par and everything even in your trucks etc and good Kadee couplers that have been adjusted properly etc. All the metal in the world aint gonna save you from a derailment.
I have railed against plastic wheels for years. Now I simply dont care anymore as long as the rolling stock works proper on track that gets cleaned.
Oh, and get a track gauge from NMRA that will have notches in the edges to check switch frog guide rails, flange depth, gauge of wheels etc etc etc. That gauge will be your friend along with a coupler height gauge.
Dont forget those trip pins. Sometimes they sneak into a hook. Just a pick is sufficient.
One other thing. Truck mounted couplers will give you hell (Just freight cars, NOT passenger equiptment which a whole another can of worms.,…). Body mounted couplers will do much better.
If these are the HO “Industrial Rail” models I’ve seen in a hobby shop, they sell for $1.98 or so and are the shoddiest of the shoddy with warped axles and out-of-round wheels. Change them to metal if you can find any that fit. These are imported by Horizon Hobby, the owners of Athearn.
Bob -
This might not mean anything, for a couple of reasons, the biggest is that I’m running N and you’re in HO. My experience has been the exact opposite (sorta). Metal wheels are usually adjustable which means they can be out of spec. PROPERLY made plastic wheels are molded to spec and really can’t change. That of course assumes that they were molded to spec in the first place. (The Atlas replacement plastic wheels are, but I do have a number of older ones that aren’t.)
Also, slightly thicker (side-to-side) plastic flanges are usually more tolerant of slight turnout indiscretions than super thin flanges on metal wheels. This is in opposition to flanges than are bigger in diameter which might have issues going over the plastic guides on the switches.
The advice above is spot on. Make sure that the wheels AND your turn outs are to spec. If they are close, then you might have to look elsewhere. The trucks and truck rotation limits might be at fault. Carefully watch the trucks go over the switches and see exactly where (and hopefully why) they are derailing and address the problem, rather than taking a shotgun approach and swapping out the axles in hopes of fixing it.
Archer
Bob, are the wheels plastic and the axle metal? From what I have seen it is not the plastic wheels that cause the problem, but the plastic axle’s. They warp and will cause the wheels to come and go out of gage. When I first got started I bought lot of cheap Life Like and Bachmann cars, replacing there wheels set with Walther’s plastic wheels and metal axle’s took car of about 60% of my derailing problems.
Next step was bring the cars up to NMRA weight standards. Most cars come in lite and that can cause problems as well. NMRA calls for .5 OZ per 1 inch of car + 1 OZ. In other words a 7 inch car is 7 X .5 = 3.5 + 1 = 4.5 OZ.
If your wheel set are metal and plastic, check there gage with a NMRA wheel gauge, if in gauge make sure the flanges of the wheel are in a lineament as well. Wheels can be in gauge, but flanges are not lined up right on a given truck. To check this hold the car on it side and look at flanges of the wheels that are on top, are they straight across from each other? Then flip over and check the other side. If they are not straight across they will pick a switch.
Double check the turn outs as well, turn out can cause all sorts of problems. Check to see if all the wheels are on the rails right before you hit the turn out! Many of us have been fooled thinking the problem is at Point B, but latter find the problem is at Point A two feet before Point B. A car will still track if 1 wheel set is off the rail’s till it hits a turn out.
I have 300 pieces of rolling stock, around 200 have metal wheels, rest plastic with metal axles.No derailment problems with either.
Cuda Ken
Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Plastic wheels work just fine. I have a large fleet of cars and better than half run on plastic wheels. For derailing problems, it’s the track if most cars derail at one time or another. It’s the cars if some cars always stay on the track and others derail.
Derailment at turnouts can be caused by a low riding coupler trip pin striking the rails in the turnout. If the trip pins are low, it’s a good bet the couplers are low. In which case a #6 flat washer (hardware store) under the trucks will raise up a body mount coupler. Truck mount couplers are another story. Any how, if the trip pins are hitting the rails, that’s your problem.
Then check that the trucks swivel freely. If the trucks are striking part of the under carriage, that’s another problem.
Inspect the wheels and file off any molding flash and smooth any rough places.
If that doesn’t do it, you need the NMRA gauge. This simple bit of stamped metal allows you to check the wheel guage, the track gauge, coupler height, and the wing rail clearances in the turnouts. Any or all of these things can be off.
Finally, check your car weight. In HO cars ought to weigh one ounce plus another 1/2 ounce for each inch of the car’s length. For instance a 4 inch long car ought to weigh 3 ounces. Find a small scale. Kitchenware places and office supply places have scales for weighting food or postage. I have used a cheapy spring balance kitchen scale for years. Most cars come light from the factory, and ballasting them up to NMRA recommendations will do wonders for them.
" If these are the HO “Industrial Rail” models I’ve seen in a hobby shop, they sell for $1.98 or so and are the shoddiest of the shoddy with warped axles and out-of-round wheels."
I second that- I have stopped buying the cheap cars because it costs more to upgrade them to decent trucks & couplers than to buy a good car to begin with! Avoid anything that looks like the packaging was designed by either a 6th-grader or someone from 1982. The packaging quality on a loco, combined with the metal wheels and quality couplers, will tell you almost all you need to know about the quality of the car. This applies to my N scale just as much, if not more than, your HO scale. We have a lot of trash to sort through to get to the good stuff in this hobby 
Happy holidays!
David said:Finally, check your car weight. In HO cars ought to weigh one ounce plus another 1/2 ounce for each inch of the car’s length. For instance a 4 inch long car ought to weigh 3 ounces.
Actually weight doesn’t play that much of a role if the wheels and track is out of gauge or the trucks have shoddy wheels or warp trucks…
As a example I don’t follow RP20.1 and I can run 20-25 car trains hours with zero derailments during the club’s open houses or during the 8 day county fair…In fact 90% of the time I am not even watching 'em other then a glace in one of the mirrors from time to time.
Why is this?
Simple.The club has smooth track work and my wheels are in gauge and my KD couplers are at the correct height.
That my fine friend makes up 99% of smooth derailment free operation.
And as usual I urge everybody to accept nothing less then smooth derailment free operation.
It took me a year but I got rid of all plastic wheels on all my 250+ rolling stock equipment. It’s not that pricey when most of the wheel problems are eliminated by using metal wheels. You can get a 100 set box of inter mountain metal wheels for just under 80¢ a set.
Metal wheels have many advantages over plastic. They roll better, they don’t pick up dirt, oil, and grime like plastic wheels do, and they make the cars roll smoother and further down the track before stopping than plastic wheels do.
Also, as suggested above, check the weight and the wheel gauge of your rolling stock. A car that is too light will practically bounce off the rails especially when shoving them into a siding. I get rolling stock weights from local tire shop dealers. I use the flat ones that have the adhesive backing on them that work great. They usually have tons of them laying around and a lot of the dealers will just give them to you by merely asking for them. I believe the rule of thumb is that a 40’ car should weigh 8 ounces + an addition ounce for each 10’ beyond 40’…chuck
True, true. With my newer layout coming together in planning stages, I’ll be running lots of Gunderson and TTX Husky-Stacks on long straights and wide curves. They’ll be totally unweighted except for the plastic carg-tainers in their bellies, and even at far less than NMRA recommended weight they’ll stay smooth and on-track with even one dinky little 8-40B at the helm- past modern-N-scale-equpiment experience shows me that with a low center of gravity and properly aligned trucks/couplers, those long ugly yellow things can be a featherweight and as reliable as all-get-out. I miss my old Ntrak modules just for that. Of course, the next project is 36x80" so I’ll have more depth. The Utah layout in the latest MR issue is giving me some nice ideas for my southwestern-to-northwestern NP&SF (yes totally impossible fantasy railroad) theme. Oh jeez, sorry I got a little off-topic! Suffice it to say, I’ll be running very light cars to get up those grades easier, and since I solder all my track and file my switch points to “jewel-like” for it, I can rely on them not to hop and skip off the frogs or butted trackjoints.
cwclark wrote: I believe the rule of thumb is that a 40’ car should weigh 8 ounces + an addition ounce for each 10’ beyond 40’…chuck
WOW! A 40’ car should weigh 1/2 a pound to start!!! [:O][(-D][swg]
What ya pullin’ these with Hobbytown RS3s? [(-D][swg]
Sorry,couldn’t let that one slide.[(-D]
I don’t know, but that 1/2 pound sounds light to me. He did say 8 ounces plus an additional ounce for each 10 feet beyond 40 feet, didn’t he???
yuppers!