As I try and divest myself of older rolling stock I have been adding both Rapido and Walthers passenger cars because of the detail and the diaphrams; I like the closer more realistic look.
I notice that the Rapido cars have more details and I like the interiors along with the easy peezy lighting. Better than Walthers lighting. But for some reason the Walthers track better than the Rapido cars. On straight section both do fine but when they hit the curves or if there is a slight dip in the road the Rapido either de-rail or uncouple more readily that Walthers. My track isn’t perfect but it is still good and secure.
Any body else see any differences. I would like to know before I make any more investments.
Are the couplers different between the two? Or do you have Kadee’s installed? You might just have a coupler issue, they all need to be correctly lined up.
Also, the trucks, check to make sure they move freely and have plenty of wobble space.
The couplers on the rapido cars are set back farther than on the walthers car so when you put two rapido cars together they will derail, I added long shank couplers to the rapido cars and cut out a whole bunch of brake piping underneath.
Once I put 1/2 oz of lead weight (in the hallway of my sleepers) on each end of my Rapido cars, they tracked very well. Until I added the weight, I was pretty frustrated. I too am a fan of the Easy Peezy lighting and I am careful about turning them off when they are not traveling the main.
I only have one Rapido car at present so can’t experiment with running two together, but the diapragms are pretty stiff and with the couplers that come with them, it appwars they would probably touch when coupled. That might be causing the derailments.
On my Walthers cars, there is a gap between the diaphragms. I suspect using longer-shank couplers on the Rapido cars would probably make a difference in your situation, especially if you have less than “super broad” curves.
Here’s an interesting tidbit of information. Until we tooled up our own metal couplers, we used McHenry’s. Some time after we started using the new metal couplers, I was running a train with some stiff diaphragms and I had a huge derailment on a broad curve. I checked the couplers and discovered that the metal couplers are 0.5mm shorter than the McHenry’s. That makes the cars much too tight together. I somehow got the coupler length wrong when I was doing the design and we never noticed it as the tests we did were with cars with very smooth diaphragms.
A lot of people put a long shank on one end of the car and a short on the other, as that spaces the cars properly.
But that solution isn’t good in the long term, especially if you are like me and most of your layout operation involves switching passenger cars. So we’ve actually tooled up a new, medium-length metal coupler to solve this problem and this will be included on all future Super Continental Line cars. We’ve also addressed the stiff diaphragm issue by enlarging the openings in the end sills.
There are still a lot of our earlier models available in hobby shops, so I can’t guarantee that your next purchase will be free of some of these bugs. But I can guarantee that most if not all of them will be solved with our future models. I am sure we will find other bugs with those…[:)]
Jason: I want to thank you for your response. I truly love the cars, and part of the problem is my track. But sometimes on certain curves they tend to derail. I have kept the radius greater than 22, I suspect it might some unevenness in the track and road bed. Most of the my other passenger rolling stock does well.
I will keep working with them. I have ordered more, as I am now selling off all of my old stock of ten to thirty years of age. I have decided to obtain the more detailed cars of today, but stay in the 1940’s-1950’s era. I do receive your news letter each month, great information and great humor. I really hope Rapido keeps up the good work. You have added a new dimension to model railroading.