I now know part of the clockwise / counter-clockwise derailments problem. The diner car has an extra set of steps on a door just over the truck. It is only on oneside. The truck hits the steps and cannot swing far enough. If I physically pick up the car, turn it around, and go over the same curve, then it works fine because the truck no longer hits the steps.
Two cars that kept derailing I checked again and noticed that the wheels on the trucks did not spin well. I used the Micro-Mark Truck Turner to fix these wheels.
When I built my layout I kept it to two feet wide with one exception. The area where I will be placing the turntable and roundhouse is three feet. I feared that if derailments were going to happen they would happen here. And of course this has become one of the trouble spots. I can fix this, but it is going to be a challenge. Glad I do not have any tunnels because deraiments would also have to happen there per Murphy’s Law.
I am down to two problem track areas. Hopefully, I will nail them tomorrow.
Even flat looking HO track is very bumpy but our models ride over bumps that railway engineers would regard as requiring repair. Those bumps don’t look that bad because at 1/87 they are tiny.
If HO scale track actually looks bumpy then in real life it would be impassable.
On my as yet not glued down track trains don’t derail when the unsupported bits of track move several mm vertically. That’s inches of unsupported vertical movement of rails in real life. 87 mm is more than 3". That’s only 1mm in HO scale, impossible to see.
I believe that the two statements are contradictory - - for the reasons given.
None of this makes a whole lot of sense.
First of all, flat looking HO scale track is not very bumpy, not even bumpy at all. The way that HO scale track is designed, the rails are supported by a web of plastic ties aided by plastic spikes all along both sides of each rail. When I put a 4’ level on top of the rails on a straight run of flex track, there are no bumps. If the track section is intact, it is virtually impossible to make it bumpy.
Second of all, when you say that your unsecured track moves several millimeters vertically, quantify “several”. There are 25.4 mm in an inch, so 5 mm is just over 3/16". If a piece of rolling stock moves several millimeters vertically, repeatedly, over “bumpy” track, that piece of rolling stock is going to derail.
Third of all, you mention “several mm”, then reference 87mm, and finally conclude that you are only talking about 1mm. Which is it?
The real issue with derailments on poor track work is what I call “humps” and “valleys”, often caused by faulty roadbed or subroadbed, unsecured sections of track like your vertical movements, unsecured sections of rail ofte
Another cause of derailments with model passenger trains is diaphragms rubbing together on curves. For model trains , it is best to have enough coupling distance to prevent that from happening even though the real trains had diaphragms tightly together.
This did not sound right, so I looked it up and did the math.
It is right.
That is about 3 human hairs! I knew our flanges were oversized, but a scale flange would be nearly invisible!
True. I tried lots of experiments to get touching diaphrams on passenger car and still have them run on a 24 inch curve. Old MHP brand Neoprene diaphrams were close to successful, but still not workable.
If you scaled up the horizontal and vertical variations of HO track layouts no prototype train could run on them.
A 1mm (about 1/24" for Americans although HO is a metric scale) variation in HO scale becomes a 3.5" variation at full size.
Then there’s the horizontal distance which clearly cannot work. Model trains have substantially more flexibility in their running gear than prototype could possibly allow.
Just axle end float in the model would scale up to terrifying lateral compliance.
To return to the original topic, when you troubleshoot problems like this it is odd and fascinating what effect seemingly tiny variances have on trackability of our models. When I had finished a project of a long string of 50’ boxcars equipped with cushion underframes (on the prototypes) and thus I installed Walthers and another make of extended coupler pockets on them, I tried them out on some challenging (and admittedly, perhaps not ideally laid) track. Cars that would sail through a couple of crossovers at fairly high speed (shoved by my “0-5-0”) could not always do so if coupled to another car. Yet something like swapping out the wheelsets could make a different. Or turning a car around, or swapping the trucks from one end to the other. Or reversing the order in which they were coupled. Or just waiting a while and trying again.
One comment about passenger cars. I have several from one of Walthers’s early runs of the smooth side Pullman Standard double deck commuter cars (C&NW, and four wheel trucks by the way). They gave me no end of trouble but someone on this Forum commented that on the bolster Walthers used a metal foil presumably to conduct electricity for interior lighting. That foil was bunched up and when smoothed out, most of the problems seemed to be addressed. I do not know if Walthers routinely uses foil in that way but it is worth checking out.
Since this thread has nothing to do with the prototype, debates on model vs prototype about trackwork seems a bit out of place…
On the other hand, I learned a whole lot about passenger car trucks and potential problems about them. I guess I’ve been lucky with mine so far, but I will keep the info handy for the future. Thanks.
My point was even ordinarily well laid track is going to be bumpy relatively speaking. We strive for good trackwork but scale effects do matter and they do restrict what is achievable.
Our models are already made to work within limitations of HO scale track but improvements can be made there.
Case in point: I’m rehabbing a CAD $3.00 Bachmann stock car. Kadee couplers mounted on the body (that’s CAD $4.00 approx ) and CAD$3.00 Walther’s sprung trucks from wherever and whenever upgraded with (probably) Rapido 33" wheel sets (what’s that about another CAD$6.00?). A new comparable RTR from Athearn costs what about CAD$30.00 and still needs new couplers.
Pushed on my not affixed rough layout track by my handy dandy always available 0-5-0 and the performance is nothing short of amazing compared to the original with its plastic trucks (complete with truck mounted horn and hook couplers).
Real railroads experience derailments because of truck problems. So do we. It’s worth bird dogging the trucks and couplers for just about any rolling stock worth running. For example, this era of Bachmann shells really aren’t that bad but the running gear is awful.
The Walthers heavyweights are pretty nice but really don’t track well. It’s worth looking into and fixing if it can be fixed.
To make them equalized, it is complex, expensive, there are lots of styles, less standardized mouting on models, all making it not the best product market for them.
While not equalized, Walthers is already selling their trucks separately, as are others.
Look at the discussions on this forum where you and I, and a few others explain the value of equalized trucks that largely falls on deaf ears.
As much as I would like nice free rolling equalized passenger trucks, I’m not holding my breath.
I still have a few Central Valley passenger trucks on a few pieces of equipment, but while sprung and equalized, they could be more free rolling.
Since this thread has nothing to do with the prototype, debates on model vs prototype about trackwork seems a bit out of place…
On the other hand, I learned a whole lot about passenger car trucks and potential problems about them. I guess I’ve been lucky with mine so far, but I will keep the info handy for the future. Thanks.
Simon
My point was even ordinarily well laid track is going to be bumpy relatively speaking. We strive for good trackwork but scale effects do matter and they do restrict what is achievable.
Our models are already made to work within limitations of HO scale track but improvements can be made there.
Case in point: I’m rehabbing a CAD $3.00 Bachmann stock car. Kadee couplers mounted on the body (that’s CAD $4.00 approx ) and CAD$3.00 Walther’s sprung trucks from wherever and whenever upgraded with (probably) Rapido 33" wheel sets (what’s that about another CAD$6.00?). A new comparable RTR from Athearn costs what about CAD$30.00 and still needs new couplers.
Pushed on my not affixed rough layout track by my handy dandy always available 0-5-0 and the performance is nothing short of amazing compared to the original with its plastic trucks (complete with truck mounted horn and hook couplers).
Real railroads experience derailments because of truck problems. So do we. It’s worth bird dogging the trucks and couplers for just about any rolling stock worth running. For example, this era of Bachmann shells really aren’t that bad but the running gear is awful.
The Walthers heavyweights are pretty nice but really don’t track well. It’s worth looking into an
The end truck on the observation car keeps shorting at a frog after coming out of a curve. I can see exactly what is happening, but no adjusting of the tracks seems to help. All the other nine heavyweight cars with six-wheel trucks pass this area just fine. I checked the wheels again on the observation car with the NMRA standards gauge and it is compliant. I cannot flip the observation car around because it is an end car. So, I exchanged the end truck off of a coach and placed it on the observation car. Now the observation car works fine and oddly enough so does the coach!
Because I am a glutton for punishment, today I decided to run the train clockwise, and lo and behold, it now is derailing and causing short in different spots from when it is running counter-clockwise. I swear two days ago it had no problem in this direction.
I am not going to give up, but in the meanwhile, when my grandchildren come over and want to run a passenger train, I think I will let them run the Con-Cor non-prototypical four-wheel shorter passenger cars. They are bullet proof on my layout.
I hope you folks do not mind my recording my observations here, but it is a way for me to document my progress and hopefully some will find this struggle of value. At least I am learning.
I have to add I picked up model railroad again, a hobby of my youth, when I retired because I thought it would be fun and relaxing. Not so much fun this week, not so relaxing. My other hobby, genealogy, was never this frustrating.
Heck no, we do not mind. This is what the forum is all about. We all appreciate your updates and your follow through on all of the advice being given. Please continue to keep us posted.
That is exactly what I did back in 2004 when I started HO scale modeling after a 45-year hiatus from the hobby that I first picked up in my youth with American Flyer trains.
Your struggle is familiar to me because I have experienced many of the same problems that you are working your way through. Model railroading can be fun when things go well, but not so much fun when the frustrations kick in.
Just today, I cleared my freight yard to get a better reach into my coach yard on the other side of my double mainline to solder some rail joiners on the coach yard ladder. Loose rail joiners were failing to power the ladder, although the yard tracks were all receiving power from feeders placed throughout the yard.
When I was done soldering, I began to back up all of the freight cars into the freight yard off of the mainline. A Kadee covered hopper was giving me fits with derailments, so I pulled it off the layout and inspected it on the work bench. Turned out, a few wheels were coated in crud, and I mean coated. While cleaning the dirty wheels, the truck basically disintegrated in my hands. Had to call Sam The Answer Man at Kadee to figure out which truck to order as a replacement.
Is the observation car only shorting on one turnout? What brand of turnout is it?
You say that you can see exactly what is happening. What exactly is happening?
When you turned the train around and ran it clockwise, where is it derailing? On a turnout? Same turnout as before? More that one turnout?
You say that it is derailing and causing a short. That is not uncommon to short the mainline after a derailment. So, I assume that the derailment is the problem, not the resulting short. In other words, had the car not derailed, no short would have occurred.
Is the car derailing after coming out of a curve? Or is the derailment at a turnout following a stretch of straight track?