Walther Heavyweight Cars Derailing

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Back in May 2021 I posted “What is it with Six-Wheel Trucks on Passenger Cars?” I have solved the problem.

My trackwork was not the issue (though I did tweak some things), it was with the nature of the Walthers Heavyweight passenger cars. To cut to the chase. They are supposed to operate on a 24-inch radius, they do not, or at least they all do not.

I was having trouble operating them on a 32-inch radius, a 30-inch radius, and a 28-inch radius. You can see the steps I took to try and solve this problem in the previous post along with a lot of good suggestions. However, I kept having trouble.

I thought if these cars are advertised to run on 24-inch radius, then let me test each of them on set track of that radius. Much to my surprise I found that the coaches all worked fine, as too the baggage cars, the RPOs, the diner, and some of the sleepers. The problem cars were the observation car, the solarium car, and one of the sleepers. When I compared them closely, turning them upside down, I noticed that the coaches all had notches in the center sill allowing for the truck to swing more. And all the non-problem cars had trucks that could easily swing out more than the problem cars.

I checked this forum and several other train forums and saw several people mentioning the need to trim the center sill.

I decided to experiment with the solarium car and trimmed back the center sill on both ends to allow the truck to swing out more. That solved about 80 percent of the problem. I then added 1 oz of weight to the back to solarium, now it runs forward and backwards 100 percent of the time. I did the same thing to the observation car, and voila, it now runs like a charm. The sleeper car started to work fine as soon as I trimmed the center sill back, no added weight was necessary.

You only notice the trimmed center sill if you turn the car over or watch it very closely if it is going by slowly. Hardly a sacrifice in accuracy for getting reliably running.</

2

Yes, things are better without derailments. I have a set of Rivarossi passenger cars rated for 18 inch curves. I found out that they don’t work on 17 3/4 curves. Yes, I tore up that track an relaid it.

I’ve usually found that just being a total fussbudget about perfect trackwork is the best policy, but making sure those long passenger cars work as advertised is important, too.

3

Mystifying, and analysis-defying, problems with reliable running is the Great Bane in our hobby. There’s a steep learning curve the first few months, followed by a more gradual and grinding gradient for the one-offs that inevitably follow from year-to-year…thereafter. Ever after.

Amen.

I’m glad you solved it. It builds character in our hobby. [;)]

4

I have had more problems with the Walthers lightweights although that could be simply because I have more of them. I have sworn off ever buying Walthers passenger cars for that reason. There is simply no excuse for putting out premium priced RTR cars that the modeler has to fix before they are useable.

I am going to check to see if the center sill is the problem on the lightweights as well. I also don’t care about the appearance of the underside of any rolling stock. The most important thing with any piece of equipment is operational reliability.