In other scales I would frequently add weight to freight cars per NMRA standards, sometimes a little bit more than recommended. I found that it helped performance. As there are no standards for Z, I was wondering if anyone here had experimented with adding weight to freight cars, esp. MTL, Pennzee or Full Throttle. I think they would benefit from some additional weight, but I don't have a sensitive enough scale to measure the cars weight. I am leaning toward just taking a tiny bit of A-Line moldable lead and adding it to my freight cars and seeing what happens. Just wondering if anyone else has experimented....
For PZ 3 bay hoppers, I have found that adding 4-6 size B lead shot greatly improves their handling of turnouts and rough track. The size B shot fits in the bay recess, so the added weight is low in the car, almost at the centerline of the wheels. Each size B shot is about 0.3 grams. I don't know the final weight of the cars, I just went by trial and error. The same size should work for Full Throttle 2 bays, as well, but so far I haven't had any reason to weight them. Dan S.
Another good thing about being able to add equal weight to the bays is that the car will not lose its balance. Dan S.
Thanks guys, that gives me some ideas. The Full Throttle cylindrical hoppers seem to really need some additional weight, they are the only cars that really give me tracking problems, esp. through turnouts.
Yes I agree. I modified some of my Cylindrical Hoppers so they sit .060" lower, and added 12 BB's to bring the weight up to 11 grams from 8 grams. The car is effectively a 50' car due to it's overall length of 2.75", so according to the basic weighting formula, 10 grams should work well enough, but these cars are also top heavy, and all it takes is a wheel to briefly snag on a turn to clothseline a train of these cars. The reason I came up with 11 grams on this car was only because the number of 12 BB's were used, over the trucks, which balanced the weight symmetrically. That and the slightly lowered center of gravity really help this car. This photo shows how much lower the modified car (left) sits than an unmodified car.
Depending on which run of cylindricals you have, the factory installed weight will be different. After the first (or maybe second) run, they doubled the weight bar inside. When they first came out, we ran about 40 of them in a mixed freight of over 100 cars. Even with the lighter weight, and a couple of our modules having bad turnouts, only a few of them gave us any problems. We discovered that a lot of their problems were due to truck fit. On some of them, the bolster pin, bottomed out before the truck was stable. I trimmed off a bit of the pin and reinserted it so that the truck could pivot freely without wobbling. Like Robert said, the cars are top heavy, so, once the truck rocks or the car tips, it throws the balance off and wheels lift. I have not opened one of these up yet, so I don't know if the chutes are hollow inside, but if they are, I would reccomend finding shot or tungsten powder small enough to fill them so that you can add weight as low as possible in the car. This would help with the top heavy situation. When I first started adding weight to my open hoppers, I was adding one size BB lead shot over each truck. This definately helped, but by adding the weight so high in the car, you could see the car tip on curves. It was also a pain getting the shot to stay centered while the glue dried. When I started putting size B shot into the hopper chutes (mostly out of laziness), I noticed that the cars rolled smoother with less rocking. Like I said, I have never opened a cylindrical, but if weight can be added in the chutes, I would strongly reccomend it. But, I would also reccomend checking your truck bolsters, as any excess wobble in these cars can lead to disaster, especially in tunnels on curves. Dan S.
Robert and Dan, Once again thanks for the input! This is great info, saving these threads as PDFs for reference later...
Yeah, you are getting into the meat of Z Scale now. We had/have no NMRA standards, so we had to do the testing and come up with values that worked best with long train running across modules with sometimes shoddy trackwork. We still hold to the 8 grams for a 40' car, 10 grams for a 50' and 12 grams for a 60' car as being the optimal weight for freight cars.
Any reason you didn't use the Full Throttle trucks with a lower center plate height? BTW - nice Marine Industries 3850 conversion
Yeah, sadly, these cars came out 5 years before the lower center plate trucks, so had long before modified into 4 bay and other cars. The Full Throttle cars were the hot ticket until the Intermountain cars came out, but they did sit too high. I think the Full Throttle cylindricals are long gone by now, but you can still get the Intermountain cars.
This is a really great discussion... the biggest help I've personally had was being religious about converting all my MTL wheelsets to metal (FVM), but the small covered hoppers are still a bit light/top-heavy, so maybe I need to do some experimenting!
Yes, I agree, Metal wheels are the low friction way to go. They pick up much less crap than plastic wheels. For some reason the plastic wheels develop a static charge while running, and attrack all kinds of dirt which forms a shiny hard glaze, then even longer running that glaze begins to chip off and the wheels start to clack or bounce. I have seen it dozens of times before the FVM wheels were released.
Tungsten putty is also useful for adding weight. Any hobby store has that, maybe associated with pinewood derby cars.
Intermountain cars are based on the newer/larger NSC 4550 cuft cars, and additionally, some of the paint schemes they offer are actually more appropriate for a kitbashed Full Throttle car...
I use Full Throttle trucks on my MTL 2 bay hoppers and covered hoppers. In addition to the metal wheelsets they come with, they are more accurately proportioned, and they also reduce the both the ride height and coupling distance between cars
Full Throttle truck on left, MTL truck on right - the difference in ride height and coupling distance is more obvious when they are on the track vs laying on their sides.
