Well, I decided to pony up some buks and buy a good car. Instead of the ICH or 'el cheapy passeneger cars out there. I buy one car, a Santa Fe coach car from the standard line (it was 34.95. Has interior and the wireing for lighting) and come to find out that is bad. The brake piston (I dont know the proper name for it) rubs BAD on the bottom of the car… Bad enough it prevented the truck from turning and it caused to pop the truck off the rail.
Well here is why I love my local store. I went back and showed them. They were surprised and there was no question, there was an issue but they were stupmed to know why. I exchanged it and got a bunch of other stuff instead.
So, question… Anyone else of problems with the Walthers cars? I admit I am now gunshy about buying them so I am also looking for good quality passenger cars to start collecting. Any ideas?
Don’t be gunshy about the Walthers Budds. They are very good cars, however, like so many model railroad rolling stock and locomotives there’s bound to be an occasional quirk or glitch here and there. I now have 10 Walthers passenger cars and plan on buying at least 10 more in east coast railroad schemes (SCL, PC, L&N, Southern, Amtrak Phase 1, NYC).
One thing modelers should remember is that when we demand quality and detail from certain items, MAINTENANCE requirements may increase as well.
I have purchased several Walthers cars and have not encountered that problem YET. Overall I have been satisfied with them barring the few minor tweaks here and there. It sounds like the electrical contact on the bottom of the car had not been properly installed in the manufacturing process. That contact keeps the truck clearance in check. I tried to push the electrical contact up into the floor of one of my Walthers cars and ran into the same scenario. I want to eliminate the contacts, but figured out I may need a washer or two to maintain the truck clearance.
I have 8 or 9 Walthrs cars - the only problem is my 4x8 - I’ve had to modify the trucks & center sill to negotiate the less than 24" radius curves. Once modified, they are as good or better than my Bachmann Spectrum. The only better car I have is my new Rapido - only changed the coupler (new one included w car) to negotiate sharp curves - detail better - lighting great as it is battery powered so no flickering! Price considered - the Walthers deserves an “A” rating![8D]
Thanks for the input guys. I did some reading and everyone seems to be happy with theirs. I read the “Super Cheif” thread and sat here wondering if it was just me and bad luck.
For the record, it did this right out of the of the box. What it appeared was the “body” was too low on the frame. the other truck, even though it was close, didnt hang up like this one did.
I consider it fate maybe trying to tell me I need to save my pennies and get the Rapido cars.
John, are you saying you have given up on correcting this matter? Is it not an easy fix? I have three Walthers heavies, and the only thing that I have found is that some of the trucks look like they are not sitting parallel to the rails. In fact, they are, but the outer side-frame plastic add-on, whatever it is meant to be on the sleepers, was applied crooked.
I have found the heavies, my only experience, to be hard to drag up my 3% grades, even with a Niagara. I suspect that it is because the journals are dry, but also that the electrical pickups are placing a lot of drag on the axles, maybe as much as 1/8 oz per car.
So, can you not pry up the body on the low end and see if you can insert any tabs in their proper places?
You mentioned rubbing at bottom of car. Trucks can pivot into underbody details on small radius curves. My good friend trimmed the center sill to clear trucks for his 24" curves.
Someone mentioned Rapido cars. I have two and they were derailing. Wheels were out of guage. I corrected the wheels and also added a little weight at the cars’ ends. No troubles since.
I just noted that someone else made a post in this thread in regards to weight. The Walthers cars are a little on the light side. I can’t remember who, but someone is making weight upgrade kits for the Walthers cars. It would most certainly be cheaper to add weight by other means, but I haven’t seen one of these weights first hand, so I don’t know if they are worth the expense or not. Great cars nonetheless!!
HARD to tell in your specific case, but MOST of Walthers passenger car problems have been from too tight a radius.
Building a Full length passenger car designed for a prototypical 72" + curves should have 36" - 44"r to run right, and has trouble on lesser curves. There’s only so much jockying a model builder can do.
In Wathers’ top quality cars, that means over 24", - but try 44".
WALTHERS, in their ads states a minimum radius of 24"r. That means ‘stay on the track’. Old timers used to use 36"r, for their minimums. I preferr 44".
ANY full length CAR to run on our in-home curves needs to cheat somewhere. IHC and RIVAROSSI use truck-mounted (Talgo) couplers and undersized (31") wheels. WALTHERS has not gone this route.
My current layout (new) has a 27" mainline curves and # 6 single crossovers. (I’d rather have 44"), but my Walthers cars go throught with KD #5 couplers.
BEST ANSWER is to use more prototypical curves with more prototypical cars - or buy ATHEARN or other SHORTY’S to fit your curves. They’ll run better. WHEN you line up the ATHEARN heavyweight next to the Walthers you’ll see the difference a buck can make.
They’ll look just fine sitting at the Passenger Station.
Did I give up on it??? You betcha. No way I was putting a BRAND new 40 dollar car on the fixer-upper shelf. Shelf is full anyways. [;)]
Well, in my defense, I bought the car 2 weeks ago and brought home, pulled it out of the box and pushed along the rail… then went to bed. I told myself that I would run it on my next day off. 2 WEEKS later, I finally got a day off and ran it. Never went around the layout. After 3 derails, I pulled it up, looked at it. Saw what was wrong and tried a “gentle love fix”. (pulling up the body). Nothing there… Saw that it would take serious work to fix. I just spent 40 bucks on a car, I wasnt about to start cuttin’, tweakin’ or fidgeing with it on something that I knew was defective.
So, back I went and got 3 new box cars instead. It helps that my favorite train store is less than 2 miles away. [:D]
And just so folks know, I was well aware of the 24"[8)] radius thing. My smallest R is 24" with an average of around 27-28"
After reading everyone’s replies, I am chalking it up to an unlucky buy.
Crandell… GLad you like the pic. One of my finer moments I assure you [:o)]
I was just about to ask the question about your track radius, when you answered it in the previous post. The Walther’s cars should take a minimum 24" radius (squeaking through) and a 27-28" with no problem. It sounds as if you had a car that had a badly seated truck. Usually, a small brass shim will take care of the problem. I say brass, in case you were thinking of installing lighting in the car.
I’ve got a fairly good collection of Walther’s passenger cars (mostly the Pullman-Standard) and I have found that several of them had derailment problems, which were usually do to one of two problems: 1) wheels out of gauge or 2) mis-aligned or too tight trucks. These were pretty easily taken care of, and my minimum radius is 34".
I’d say that you originally got a ‘problem’ car, but actually, the solution is fairly easy. Loosen the truck and check the wheel guage. That can usually be solved by a simple twist of the wheel on the axle. Right now, all of my Walther’s cars work very well.
But one thing to remember, their reccomendation of 24" minimum radius is an ABSOLUTE minimum. That means ‘crawling’ the train through.
Hope this doesn’t deter you from getting any additional Walther’s cars–they’re pretty darned good, and they look terrific running on the layout.
I also have a 4X8 with 22 radius and am looking at a Spectrum set (HO). Do you have any problems with those or have heard of any problems with those negotiating the turns?
I can’t seem to find anyone to answer this question.
I have about a dozen of the Spectrum coaches and they work just fine on tighter radius turns right down to 18" (though they look mighty silly hanging off of them). They have an articulated coupler pocket that allows them extra angularity when swiveling. Hope that helps. J.R.
Walthers does make nice passenger cars so you might just ask for your LHS to send it back and replace it with another.
Regarding passenger cars and curves. Yes, if I were building a small layout in the neighborhood of 4x8, I would increase the size nominally and make my minium curves 24 and 26.5 inches so I could accomodate most of the stuff out there. My past two layouts were a garage layout (16x19 feet with 30-inch miniumum mainline curves) and a basement layout (14x25 feet with minimum 32-inch mainline curves). At that time I had a brass California Zephyr and some of the cars would not even negotiate the 32-inch curves but needed about 34-inches or more. This was due to the full length side skirts etc. I think after shimming up the trucks with a KD washer slightly, they would all barely do 32-inch curves. I have them on consignment to sell now since I have the BLI CZ plastic cars - which some how will run on 24-inch curves depsite the full length side sills.
I think Don’s comment that we need 44-inch curves is well, an ideal world. Very few home layouts can do that but most medium or larger home layouts can run at least 28-inch curves and most a bit larger as minimums. I think all our 85 and 89 foot long cars will handle a 30-inch curve just fine. They may not look as nice as we would like but they should run fine. I recall on my garage layout, there was a 36-inch curve and my 89’ auto racks still looked funny on that curve.
I think there’s a difference between a “fixer upper” and needing to tweak a few things to get a car to run right on your layout. I suspect you could have gotten the car to work by trying a few things as suggested above, but if you don’t want to do it that’s understandable. My Walthers Superliners work fine on 28" radius curves, but I’m not sure how well they’d do on tighter curves, despite Walther’s claims about 24" min. radius.
BTW if you got the car because you model the Santa Fe, Athearn heavyweights are based on ATSF prototypes. Their RPO, Baggage and Coach cars are full length for their prototypes, and will take very sharp curves since they have truck-mounted couplers.
I’ve bought a number of them, both streamlined and heavyweight, and most run fine. I do have a problem with one solarium/obs that wants to derail at the same curve and I have been unable to figure out why so for now, it has been parked in the coach yard. I’ve read of similar problems others have had. The Walthers cars look great but given their price tag, they should be more reliable runners. There is always going to be an occasional lemon in any product line, but there seems to be too high a percentage of these in the Walthers line.
I bought a large fleet of Spectrum coaches for my commuter fleet. The couplers are junk. Its a nice idea to have body mounted couplers that swing with the trucks, but the stock couplers sag terribly and a lot of vertical uncoupling was the result. I replaced all of them and eliminated the problem. I was able to do this because my minimum radius is 32". I’m not sure what you could get away with if you have smaller radii.
I model the ATSF with an IC interchange. I have quite a few Walthers and Bachmann Spectrum passenger cars, and they look and run just fine. They are “scale length”, and give a nice impression going down the tracks.
Before I got them, I put together a 15 car set of Athearn heavyweights and painted/decaled them for the ATSF, and changed out couplers and did some very light weathering. And while the olive colored cars are boring to some, and short in length to others, I find that I actually prefer running them over the much more expensive and “correct” cars mentioned above.
I think that the size of the layout is a major factor in this. My 15x11 is certainly not small, but a 12 car train of Walthers/Spectrum cars covers almost 1/3 of the main. If my layout were smaller, I would not keep the larger cars, and just put together a nice set of Athearns…