Hi all, new to the site and have a bit of a problem with these short ore cars.
I got a set of 12,(new) and they seem to consisantly derail, even on straight sections. My layout uses 18" radius curves, so I doubt that is in any way connected to the problem.
I have noticed the following however;
1: Cars seem very light
2: the bogies (trucks) just seem a bit, well, odd, One car in particular makes a bit of a grinding sound as if something is rubbing, but when removed from the track, nothing can be found.
3: The wheels dont seem very free running at all, even though they do not seem to bind at the ends.
Now I know I am going to have to put extra weight in these cars, thats not a problem, as I am going to use dental alginate to make an inside mould of the car bottom, then cast lead weights in a silicone mould (sorry mold)! made from this, but its the wheels and bogies that worry me the most. They just dont seem “right”.
Anyone had the same experience and know how I can modify these to run nicely without buying replacement ones? I really think the wheels are the culprits here, but just cant see anything obvious.
A friend has several sets of Walther ore cars. He replaced all of the wheel sets with metal ones(Inotermountain) and reamed out the journals with an Micro Mark ‘tool’. They still were far too light and he added ore loads with a large ‘nut’ under the ore load. He has something like a 48 car train that now performs fine.
That is exactly what I did (replace the wheel sets with Intermountain metal wheel sets) to the 16 Walthers ore cars that I own. They now run perfectly. I had no need to add weight. Once the wheels were changed, the cars ran fine.
These cars use the truck screw to hold the coupler in place so you can’t do the “one truck loose” trick unless you first glue the coupler pocket so it can’t move. Then they work pretty well.
The grinding you hear on a curve is a truck wheel rubbing against either the coupler box or the “skirt” between the doors and the trucks. The problem is that the trucks are longer than on the prototype and the flanges are bigger too. Some judicious filing on the body should help.
Reaming out the axle pockets with the Micro Mark “tool” gives the axle tips a little more room to move around and also helps tracking. Doing these things I’ve had pretty good luck with the old plastic wheel cars. I haven’t tried the newer metal wheel cars yet. IMHO the MDC cars still run better.
What I did is replace the trucks with Proto 2000 trucks with metal wheels on all of them, and added one or two red Kadee paper washers to raise the car up a little to allow room for the wheels to roll and the trucks to turn side to side. They’re now the best-rolling/running cars I have.
I have the gold line 12 pack that has the same problem. They came with metal wheels. I pulled them out at christmas for the neighbor kids to run so each had a train to play with(one O scale and one HO scale). I found that the ore cars rub on the bottoms. Wheels and body are too close. I will either have to change wheelsets or do some sanding of the bodies. No big problem that I see just needs tweaking. But what does not need tweaking anyway right
What I’d try first is adding Kadee Washers. You can get them from the LHS. Red are .015", Grey are .010". Either one red one or two gray generally takes care of it…you just unscrew the truck’s screw and remove the truck, pop one or two washers on the bolster, and replace the truck and screw. The washer are designed to be used to raise the car when the Kadee couplers sit too low, but they’re perfect for this situation too. They’re the first two items in the link below:
BTW I replace the Walthers dummy couplers while I’m doing that with Accurail dummy couplers, except for the outside pair which are Kadees (I do the ore cars into “mini-quad” sets of four, so all the cars are connected with dummies except the two end cars have Kadee’s on one side and dummies on the other.) The Accurail dummies are about the same size as Kadees and will couple with them.
Another basic tool is an NMRA standards gage. This is used to check if the wheels are spaced correctly (among other things). A narrow or wide spaced wheel set can lead to derailments. http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/98-1
I have a bunch of those I just have not gotten to it since christmas because I have been busy weathering and adding decoders to a bunch of engines for ebay sales.
Hi there. I am new and came to this since I have/had a problem with my Walters ore cars. It is almost 6 years this thread was postet and it seem no solution is offered. Is there any hint so far or has everybody just given up? I do have a good number of these Walter ore cars and find it just a wrong and never corrected design! The trucks are just to near to the middle. One truck more than the other. I cleared the frame underneath the truck cover to move the truck just a litttle bit to the end of the car. It is not visable to the outside and it works fine!!! No wheel change, washers or other things necessary to get rid of the rubbing. Are pictures needed? gillion
