Pretty basic. Set the car on level track and blow gently. If its free-rolling, it should move easily.
My LHS owner was suggesting Jaybee (?) wheelsets while I was in there Saturday. He showed me the way the cars in his grain train roll, but I wasn’t real impressed. Granted, he admitted very few of these cars had anything other than the original manufacturer’s wheels under them, but even on his flat layout none of the cars were rolling all that far with a reasonable push. Anyone else have any experience with these wheelsets? He told me that he thought that the NMRA did have a standard for “free-rolling”, but we couldn’t find it. Granted, he did have other customers, and I had to get going, so it wasn’t the most in-depth search ever conducted, but it still came up bust. He also seemed to think that the NMRA car weight standard was designed with the old, crappy train set wheels to get them to roll at all, and that with better rolling wheels the “extra” weight over what comes with a car is just overkill. Any thoughts on that?
The NMRA standards and RPs are at http://www.nmra.org/standards/consist.html#standards but I can’t find any measurable standard, just the statement that they should be free rolling with the NMRA recommended weight. Interesting thought about whether really free rolling trucks mean less weight is needed.
Personally, I have always weighted my cars to the NMRA standard - I think it helps and I don’t run long enough trains for the weight to be a limiting factor.
Enjoy
Paul
Beware that you can’t have an answer that always works. I’ve got lots of Athearn BB and MDC where I’ve routinly cleaned the journals with the ‘tool’ and replaced the wheelsets with P2K. This past weekend I got an Athearn RTR '50 combo door box car and did the above routine. The trucks are narrower. Narrow enough that the original plastic wheel set are free wheeling. Phooey. Distance between points on the P2K is 1.015". The original is .985". May have to buy a new set of trucks. Double Phooey.
Follow-up on my Athearn RTR '50. I installed P2K 100 ton trucks and the car showed me a couple of new unlevel spots on my layout. Did have to provide clearance on the underframe as these trucks had the correct 36" wheels replacing the original 33".
Suggestions for " O" Scale freight twheelsets/trucks anyone? [ not toy type like Lionel, and not the 1/4 AAR.super accurate, just regular scale “O” ]
Jennifer
Jennifer,
Atlas has O guage trucks for 2 and 3 rail. Offerings are Andrews, 50-Ton, 100-Ton and caboose.
Mike
If you ever had a couple cars find their way to a long downgrade and have them break the scale sound barrier (750 scale MPH), your cars might be free-rolling.
RE: O scale, I know about the Atlas, not bad at all. I was wondering if there were some small company out there making something really nice for standard O. I have few cars, some very vintage from the 50s, and some Atlas current manufacture.
In my On3 experience, every wheelset I have ever seen has been a metal tire or complete wheel, and passible axel bearing,usually plastic. Sometimes, its a metal axel and the metal wheel is mointed with an insulator. However ‘fair’ the bearings may be, some better some worse, compared to the advantage of the nice metal rims, it dosen’t really matter how free rolling they are because we pull trains of 2 [passenger] to 5 [freight] cars. Hardly a load at all.
Jennifer,
Try Precision Scale. Here’s their web site. http://www.precisionscaleco.com/
Mike