Solving a derailment problem.

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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We had our “Club” meeting at the house on Thursday and looking at some of the posts I thought this may help some people.

The train crew was trying to move a 4 car Rivarossi passenger train from Ashley to Nanticoke. A little Background These are not STOCK Rivarossi cars. They are all modified according to Andy S’s article in Passenger Train operations (sorry about the title, may be off). THey are Body mounted couplers running on 30" Min radius mains.

So as you can see they should be fine. THey had the cars uncouple (tiny dip in track) so they fixed the track, ran over that section about 6 times and moved on. Get to another section and the fun started. Baggage car derailed. Pulled the Baggage car sent it to RIP. Guage was checked, coupler height, coupler movement in box and luberication of the wheel sets. Returned from RIP and tested again. Derailed at the same location. Back to RIP!

At this point the trucks where rechecked and someone decided to check the trucks for swing. THe truck was found to bind on the coupler box which caused the truck to freeze in place and climb the rail. Some file work and the car was returned to the track. Ran forward and backwards to make sure that it was the car not the track work. This fixed the problem.

The one thing that you should get out of this is that these are SMALL TRAINS and they do not required a big problem to derail. We are pulling all the paseenger cars off and checking for this problem. (76 cars). We have been converting all “NEW” kits to metal wheels sets it they did not have them. THere are 65 or so OLD cars that are going to be weighted, Kadee’s added and then run throught the NMRA check. We will then run them in a test train. If all is well they will go in service with Plastic wheels. If they have a porblem we will change to Metal wheels ( Proto) if they STILL have a problem, and they do sometimes, new Kadee trucks will be installed.

We are having a better than 85% success with not having to cha

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UPDATE:

Found that the wheel sets where a problem on (3) new engines (out of gauge) (1) BLI and (2) Spectrum.

ALSO Factory coupler height on 22 of 28 locos where wrong by enough to require shims and or cutting. Pilot trucks where the biggest pain to get fixed.

This along with the other part of this post have realy helped in the fun factor for running.

Next house work is the pulling of all cars built before 1965 for their turn in the standards track.

Never thought that I would have to set such a strict STANDARD for a model railroad. Do not waste your time like I did start NOW and avoid the derailments, uncouplings and yes SHORTS that non standard rolling stock can cause.

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George,

I’ve learned some valuable lessons from my recent upgrade of a set of IHC HW passenger cars that echo your remarks. Because this is my first attempt at this, I wanted to start with inexpensive cars and see what I could do with them.

I installed 36" Intermountain wheelsets, Jaybee coupler pads, Kadee whisker couplers and added weight. I found on some of them I had to do surgery to the original trucks to keep them from binding on the coupler pads - hopefully I haven’t compromised the structural integrity of the trucks. If I did, I can always replace them.

Also, the couplers seem to ride a little low. This is because of adding the coupler pads but these cars will only be coupled to each other so I don’t see that as a big problem.

Running them on my 4X8 22" radius practice layout has highlighted some track problems and now I have them running about 80% of the time without derailment or uncoupling. I figure I should be good when I get to the real layout with much broader curves, as long as my track work is solid.

Bottom line is you are right, most of the problems require only subtle adjustments. I’ve learned a lot by following some sound advice on this forum and then applying it.