Aside from adding weight and Kaydee couplers, (which I’ve already done), what can a person do to keep these blamed things from derailing. I have decided to put them up for sale at the next train show, but figured I’d give them one last chance. I have about 40 lightweight and 15 heavyweight cars, (all Santa Fe). They’re beautiful cars, but I’m tired of just looking at them sitting in the station. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
Dick
Texas Chief
I haven’t had any problems with my lightweight cars since I added weight to them.
What radius are you running them on? The club that I belong to has large radius curves but there isn’t any problems with them on #6 turnouts and #8 crossovers. I check them out before going to the club on Bachman 33" ready track and even on an S curve they don’t have any problems.
Doug
Some Walthers cars have had problems with wheels being out of gauge. If you have an NMRA wheel-gauge, I’d suggest checking the wheelsets on the cars.
Also, I’ve noticed that the car trucks seem to be screwed in a little tight. As a matter of course, I backed out the screws about 1/2 turn and this helped a lot. And check the screw-heads on the trucks where they connect with the lighting strips on the bottom of the car. Some of the screw-heads have burrs on them that catch on the strips and cause derailments. Filing the screw-heads down just a little lets them slide much more effectively.
I like the Walthers cars a lot, but they’re really not RTR right out of the box. They take a little ‘tweaking’ to get them to run well. And as far as minimum radius–the 24" that the box states really doesn’t mean much–I find that they need at least a 26"-28" to run well, and run even better on a radius above 30".
Tom [:)]
Assuming your curve radii are sufficient do you have any specific places they derail? Ess curves are notorious for derailing long cars if there is not a length of straight track between them. This is particularly evident with body mounted couplers. The reason is each car is trying to swing to the outside of the curve on opposite sides of the track exceeding the cars ability to compensate. Truck mounted couplers can help but the usual reccomendation is at least one car length of straight track between curves.
I have several of the double deck commuter cars, which I will use for the C&NW bi-level trains such as the Flambeau 400 (not exact but close enough for me). I was using the cars to test my somewhat complex track work at one spot and was getting very frustrated at my seeming inability to put down smooth track. Then I found that certain of the cars would derail even on tangent flex track! Doh!
What I found (and these are the only Walthers passenger cars I have, at least of the “new” plastic cars, so I may not be being helpful about other cars) is that at the bolster there is some kind of thin silvery metal, almost foil, in the bolster area. I am not sure what its function is – preparation for future lighting? – but anyway, the foil was so sloppily applied that it was actually interfering with the trucks. Pushing or tamping the foil down with a cotton swab completely took care of the problem, except for one wheel set that was slightly out of gauge and also easy to correct. Once that was done I learned that my complex track work was just fine.
What makes me mad is that before I found the true cause of the problem, I had already replaced a fairly pricey Peco turnout – and ruined the old one in the process. Now I know that old one was likely OK as it was. Grrrr.
Dave Nelson
Very simple fix - Rapido!!![:-,]
I have several of Walthers heavyweight cars. Besides the recommendations already mentioned there is one more that I use also. Besides the bolster the trucks also contact the car at the metal plates that are used for electrical pickup. Sometimes the metal plates cause the truck to tilt up at one end, which can easily cause them to derail. You could file the screw heads that rest against the metal plate or loosen the bolster screw enough that most of the car’s weight rest on the metal plates. This allow the truck to ride level. This has worked for me.
I appreciate the tips offered here. I only have three Walthers heavies that run quite well. The closer they get to 24", though, the greater their tendency to give me grief. I try to keep them on curves better than 26". I feel that, between the diaphragms and the electrical contacts below the car, these two conspire to make the claims of a 24" radius minimum optimistic. For really reliable running, try 28" and up. Smooth sailing…er…runnning.
I got many of these cars. Over 50 of the heavyweights. It’s hit or miss in my experience. Some will derail while some other will do just fine. I check each car now but I have to run them to find the problem cars. Some I’ve been able to fix, others are pretty much stationary. My minimum radius is 36" so that ain’t the problem. Some simply seems to be trouble. Others can run around for ten hours without a glitch.
It’s a shame since they are such nice cars.
Magnus
The only problem is that Rapido doesn’t offer any Santa Fe prototypes as of yet.
I have a Walther’s dome (PS Santa Fe “Pleasure Dome”) that kept de-railing, and after pushing in the metal contacts for the lighting, it quit the de-railing (same contacts mentioned above).
I suspect that those metal contacts and the Philips-head screws on the trucks are a major cause of the derailment problems with these cars.
Tom [:)]
I’m pretty sure that the tightest curves on my clubs layout is 24". Ivanhen, you’re right about Rapido. The only time a Rapido car derails at the club is when it’s coupled to a Walthers car and it derails first. What I’ve seriously given thought to, is to buy some BLI Zephyr cars and reletter them for Santa Fe. One of the club members has about 15 of these cars and he can run them the full length of the layout, forward and backward, without derailing one single car. Phenominal!!! Thanks again folks.
Dick
Texas Chief
My Canadian is all Walthers cars and they show very well…nary a derailment. However, I did tweek the Diaphragms, wheels and weight. Once those are taken care of, you should be ok.
David B
Another thing to check is if the ends of the truck sideframes are hitting the skirting on the sides of the cars. I had two of the LW cars do this, and a little bit of shaving on the backside of the skirts made a HUGE difference. Now all of my cars can handle a 24" curve with no problem…which is good because one of the yard leads at the club has a tight spot that cannot be corrected because of its location.
The precautions of making sure those electrical contact points are flat and loosening the truck screws are good to do as well. Don’t give up on the cars just yet! [:)]
Curious, I’ve had more trouble with my BLIs than I have with the Walther’s. I have never weighted a Walther’s car I change the couplers and lubricate the trucks & bolster (make certain they pivot freely). Of course I got a lot of my BLI cars from the FIRST run were almost every single axle was out of gauge.
I guess I got lucky. I can get my Skytop around 18" radius. Looks goofy, but it works. I had to relay some of the curve, as the flextrack had made less than 18". I set in a few pieces of Snap-Track, and all was well.
I have a feeling the Superdome on order won’t fare as well.
I got the same problem with some of my BLI CZ. Some is just messed up and took a long time to get right.
My biggest problem is that since I’m still constructing my layout I’m not always 100% wether it’s the cars or the layout! But I presum that if 90% is OK it’s not the track but just these specific cars from Walthers and BLI.
Magnus