The heavyer the car the better sprung trucks work up to a point. There are alot of brands out there and some are just plain bad, as are some ridgid ones! You can get replacment springs for your trucks so you can get the ridgidity you want but don’t expect to find them in a hobby shop or a Walthers, just ain’t going to happen. Now I have a ?, and one know of a wood beam passenger truck of a small size, sprung of course for my mdc overtons (central valley’s are too big).
Yes, there are springs that create a suspension system similiar to that of a prototype truck. I find that sprung trucks track much better and vastly reduce the unprototypical jerking and rocking motions of the model’s carbody when passing over rough trackwork than rigid frame trucks can afford.
Try Precision Scale. They offer a wide variety of sprung passenger trucks in kit or assembled form. These are lost wax castings. There may be others but I’ve purchased some of the PRR R-50-B trucks for use under P-70 coaches.
I’ve found this disscusion very interesting. Thanks for everyone giving their views. Back in the 60’s the opinion would have run heavily to sprung trucks made by one manufacturer: Central Valley. These were excellent trucks, and I think their secrect was high quaiity, accurately made wheel sets along with springs that were soft enough to get them to work properly with cars of average weight.
That said in my experience the problem trucks are usually fixable by replacing the wheel sets with good quailty in gauge wheels. Performance seems to be about equal for either rigid or sprung trucks with some fine points in favor of sprung trucks, assuming good wheel sets are used. I had problems with the Walther sprung trucks too, but changing wheel sets was all it took to get them working correctly. I’d reccomend that course of action as a first step in correcting any problems.
As far as small wood beam trucks for shorty coaches, I don’t think there was ever a sprung truck of this type available. I think the PSC trucks of this type are ridgid and HOn3. Of course these could be modified. If you’re willing to look for old stuff, Ulrich, Red Ball, Binkley and possibly Cliff Line made a rigid truck that would work.
JBB
[:)]
This happens to the 1:1s also. Last accident I went to see was in the President’s home town, Crawford, TX. Springs all over the place.
[:)] [:)]
Look all the time for old stuff, I would rather restore than build new, central valley cars being my favorite as they were small, have even come up for a way to save the lettering and still repaint the car. Just needed to know whats out there and have learned that there is far more out there than anyone knows, many a manufacture sold one item type and then closed shop. another ?, since their are those overseas that like to steal ideas, why don’t they steal the central valley fox trucks and make them, buying them one at a time is a pain !!!
I use both sprung and unsprung trucks of many different brands. They all work fine if the quality is good. A lousy truck is a lousy truck with or without springs. Some of the best sprung trucks are Central Valley, but they haven’t been made since the mid 1970’s, I think. They were an expensive truck then and used ones still are. Next best, in my opinion, are Kadee which are still made. You can sometimes tweak poorly made sprung trucks to track well buy carefully filing the bolsters and side frames where they slide to get the trucks square and equalizing, but this isn’t worth the effort unless the style of truck is rare or otherwise important to you. As for the stiffness of springs, I replaced the springs in a pair of plastic arch bars (maker unknown) with Kadee O-scale knuckle springs. They fit and are so soft that a roundhouse box car (weight about 75 grams) actually depresses the springs and bounces as the car rolls. How is that for realism? It tracks fine.
Ken Mosny, President Sugar River and Ridgefield
I wondered if someone would bring up the best trucks made in the past, Central Valley, they were all metal with very good wheelsets, they even had 88 narrow flanges as option, had bettendorf & roller bearing as I recall, also toward the last of their production they went to brass rolled tube axles that were not on a par with their original solid axles, the next best was Lindberg Line, all plastic bolster & sideframes, 3 styles of side frames, wheelsets were not their best however. These were then sold by Dan Kilgore direct, now E & B, these are available from Greenway. these have excellent wheelsets & axles, narrow 88 std. The aformentioned are all sprung, I had a layout in my first marriage go round the I could run 100 car trains, they demanded free rolling trucks and Kadee couplers, Kadee in my experience are the toughest couplers, no vertical separation. Kadee has excellent sprung trucks, side frames & bolsters are metal, I still replace these with Jaybee or NWSL or now Intermountain, they are a close match to what CV had back when.
Kilgore, heard oldtimes talk of how well they worked but never saw or heard the history, sound like an existing truck with better springs.