I’ve been looking at purchasing some newer Walthers 85’ passenger cars to expand my Great Northern Empire Builder consist and update it a bit. My current passenger car fleet is made up of some older Rivarossi/IHC passenger cars that handle my curves just fine, including 18’ when I want to run them around my Christmas tree!
Will these newer Walthers passenger cars (just the older “Walthers” brand, not the newer “Walthers Proto” stuff) track well on my 4x8 foot layout? My outer radius is around 23&1/2 inches, which handles everything I run, including a Walthers 85’ Superliner.
Note:
These newer ones I speak of appear to be from the later 2000’s and early 2010’s before Walthers came out with the Empire Builder as a name train. They appear to have no grab irons like the newer Walthers or WalthersProto cars.
I don’t think older vs. newer 85’ Walthers passenger cars matter for minimum radius.
My Walthers RTR 85’ passenger cars list from the last 10 or so years 24" recommended minimum radius. Many report they don’t operate very well until you get upwards of 28" minimum radius.
On my last layout, the Walthers 85’ passenger cars ran fine on 32" and 30" radius curves, but less so on 28" curves. On the layout before that, I had 22" and 24" radius curves, and there were significant derailment problems.
One solution would be to install long centershank couplers, as opposed to medium centershank couplers, between the cars to avoid snagging the end of one car against the end of another car.
What makes no sense to me is how my Superliner operates great on my curves. I’m assuming these will run fine, but possibly the diaphragms could tense things up along the train. Maybe if I put my Rivarossi cars in between the Walthers ones since they have no diaphragms, they will operate fine. If my new ones do not work out, I could always try converting the trucks into “talgo” ones with truck-mounted couplers.
That sounds reasonable. I think I might switch out the couplers or switch out the trucks entirely to talgo ones for the time being since the diaphragms seem most likely to cause problems. We’ll see though, they could end up running fine.
Do you have any reccomendations for switching out the stock couplers?
I’m surfing Walthers right now and came across these “Long Shank Extended Drawbar” things that appear to make the drawbar longer-could I just use these?
That talgo truck option was kind of a last resort, but my Rivarossi cars seem to run just fine with them. The IHC ones need a bit more weight as they do derail a lot compared to my IHC ones which have a bit more.
What I do is place a Medium Centerset Shank (#148) on one end of each car and a Long Centerset Shank (#146) on the other end of each car. That gives me enough clearance without the appearance of a long void between each car. If there still is a problem, then put #146 couplers on both ends of every car.
I haven’t had any Walther’s cars but I did have some Bachmann 85’ dome cars that never derailed in my single 24” radius curve. They didn’t have diaphragms. I no longer run the 85’ cars because they look strange with my Athearn 72’ cars.
I had problems with my Athearn cars when I added diaphragms but with some fiddling around I finally got the diaphragms to work without derailing. Making the diaphragm connecting plates smooth enough to allow easy slippage was the fix, extremely smooth plates with little pressure and no derailing.
All my Athearn passenger cars have Talgo trucks and no problems even backing into my yard Atlas #4 turnouts. All my passenger cars have Athearn metal wheel sets.
I do run all my rolling stock slightly over NMRA weight. I just prefer heavier cars to prevent the cars from wobbling over turnouts when running at creep speeds.
I like the Kadee Scale couplers and to prevent accidental uncoupling I went to the Scale Shelf Coupler. They can be a problem uncoupling using a tool but work great over the Kadee magnets or electric uncoupler.
Out of the box, Walthers 85’ passenger cars are not without problems, but at least those problems are fixable by swapping out the couplers for Kadees and reaming the trucks a bit for better rolling of wheelsets. Even a drop of lubricating oil on axle points helps.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have a Canadian Pacific ‘Canadian’ train. On my old club’s portable layout half of them would not run even on the 30"+ radius curves. I was very disappointed. The curves on my new layout will range from 24.75" to just under 27" so I really need all the help I can get to figure out how to improve the cars’ ability to stay on the rails. I just ordered a bunch of Kadee #146 long shank couplers as a start.
Edit: I have just started a thread on the General Discussion forum asking specifically what modifications people have made to their Walthers 85’ cars to get them to run reliably on 24" radii.
Thank you for all the replies! I’ll just order those Kadee #146 couplers as a replacement, and see how they run. I’m planning on getting 4 cars (to increase my Empire Builder consist length from 5 to 9 cars, and 11 if I’m modeling a BN passenger train).
That’s what I do too, it seems to make a big difference.
Note that the Walthers cars don’t come with body mounted couplers/coupler boxes, they’re on a sprung pivot so they can move left or right to follow the car in front of them.
Here is a thought. You could rebuild a slightly larger layout, say a 4.5 x 8’ layout. The extra 6" added to the width would allow you increase the maximum radius to say, 25" radius (if you are up to using flex track). The inner radius could be 22" if you have a double track oval. A 25" outer radius would be much friendlier to scale length passengerr cars. Something to consider if you really want to run longer cars - rebuliding a small layout to break free of the 4x8 straight jacket could be liberating.
As for the Christmas tree, why not buy a circle of Kato Unitrack. It has a built in base and you can get larger curves such as 24"R, 26 3/8"R and 28 3/4"R. I’d suggest one of the latter two curves for longer passenger cars and you can set it up under a Christmas tree to run trains, and drive the cats crazy if you have them!
That’s an interesting thought! A slightly larger layout would be interesting, although I am now quite far into construction so that would require a lot of tearing up just to add that extra radius. I’ll keep that in mind though. As for the Kato Unitrack, I never knew they had that large of a radius for their tracks. That seems like an interesting idea, I might replace my single loop sometime with 2 Unitrack ones, since even my 72’ passenger cars look wrong on my current one.
Kato Unitrack goes all the way up to 31 1/8th inch radius, along with the others I mentioned, and smaller. They have quite a selection. Technically they have a 34 inch curve but those are only half sections, and I think are made for sidings.
