When I finished laying my track a few years ago I was having problems with derailments. My layout has traditional 11" sectional, non-superelevated curves and all the rolling stock at the time was equipped with Rapido couplers and was the stock weight, meaning very light! The track was and is, as perfect as I could make it so I decided to tune the rolling stock rather than fiddle with good track (if the prototype dealt with our curve radius they'd have common derailments too!). The first thing I did was buy a bunch of lead fishing split-weights at Wal-mart. These are very cheap, come in a variety of sizes & shapes, and when crushed flat with a pair of pliers they easily glue down to the floors in box cars, covered hoppers, cabooses, etc. I just added as many to the floor of each car as would practically fit without causing any leans or problems. I didn't use a scale or anything, just added enough so that the car had some "mass", usually 5 or 6 small weights (these really worked well on my Bachman 2-8-0 in the tender, much better electrcal pickup). The weights made a dramatic improvement, not only in reducing derailments but also in how the cars track & sound, just much more realistic. They also have some heft when you pick them up. Next was to convert everything to knuckle couplers, either Atlas or MT, but everything got converted. After these upgrades derailments now only occur if a turnout is thrown the wrong way. My test is to run a long train at speed in reverse for several laps, taking different routes. No derailments and it passes the test. Now trains run for hours on end with zero problems, often unattended. It took a little while but I got the layout to this level through this kind of tuning. Hopefully this advice will prove useful to someone out there. Merry Christmas.
It's amazing what a little weight, "working" couplers and decent trackwork can do for any layout. Even though there are NMRA weight standards I whole heartedly agree with you on the functional as well as visual difference additional weight can make to any piece of rolling stock. Merry Christmas back to you! Brian
Im working in HO scale but I afree NMRA standards to me seem a bit light. Especially now with DCC and how easy it is to really MU locos. Most of mine are arouns NMRA but some are heavier and ive noticed fewer problems with heavier cars. Maybe NMRA should revisit weights.
I've gone round and round on this one. In the early days, in my case mid-70s, the only way I could get a train of ore jennies to stay on the track was to weight them far beyond standards. The only way I could get passenger cars to light up was to weight them heavily. I used to experiment a lot with bits of solder as weights. As equipment got better, and my skills improved, I started taking weight out of some of the cars. A 60-car, heavily weighted ore train would not make it up some grades without uncoupling or straight-lining, nor would it make it down without buckling near the engines. I reached a fair compromise on the old road; I think I'll be unweighting even more cars on the new one. One advantage of weighting cars to a standard is that you can pretty much estimate what an engine consist will pull. So, many of my cars are weighted to the NMRA standard. Yes, there are differences in rolling quality, but I've found the differences even out in a longer train. There's also the question of locating cars in the train. Heavier cars towards the front, lighter cars to the rear? That's great when you have a small fleet (say, 100 cars), and get to know each one over time. I could never figure out where to put my poor-rolling cars--they get removed until I can fix them up and "converted" if I can't. I think each railroad has its own demands of its rolling stock. My fleet has grown considerably in the past few months, so I don't know my cars like I used to. I'm buying quality cars, because I'm tired of fiddling with much cheaper stuff. These cars are usually weighted to NMRA standards, I think--but I haven't checked because they roll so well. It will be a while before I get back to the RIP track. These older cars may just decorate a yard track for many years, whatever their weight or rolling qualities. My advise is to experiment with weighting. Try one strip of solder or one piece of lead of the same size, and see what happens. Then try two, or one and a half, or three. Cars do not have to be weighted identically (if at all) to perform at their best.
I also found that metal wheel sets improve the rollability of the cars and increase loco pulling performance by 20% on average. My entire fleet of rolling stock is now equipped with metal wheel sets. I've also been adding weight to certain cars and tenders on steam loco's. The new LL 2-8-4 tender is in desperate need of addition weight. Stay cool and run steam.....
This is a timely post for me. I just reassembled my layout and put the Unitrack together and am having some derailment problems with some coal hoppers. After finding a couple of tight bolster pins, the derailments are down, but still occur occasionally. The only weight is a thin bar in the base of the hopper (Precision Masters, now Red Caboose Ortner 5-bay). Based on the above, I should probably add weight, which means modeling the hoppers loaded (not a big deal for me) and adding metal wheelsets. Bob, If you don't mind me asking, which metal wheelsets do you prefer? Most of my trucks are MT-1035. Thanks! Tim
FYI on the 5-bay RD hoppers: I swapped out the original 1035 MT wheels with MT low-profile replacements, after striking out at the local hobby shops for metal ones. I also weighted each 5-bay hopper with two 1/4" nuts wedged into the center bay. The LP wheelsets clear the Unitrack rail joiners where the old wheels appeared to catch and hop over the joint. Now the train sounds more solid and there are no derailments. Thanks for the advice! Tim
Tim: I used the Atlas 33" metal wheel sets for MT trucks on 450 cars. I am surprised how well they track and there aren't any derailments. The metal wheel sets improve loco performance dramatically with better tracking and less resistance of the wheels on the track. I still have about 50-60 cars to do. Those cars were recent puchases. I outfitted some Passenger cars to the wheel sets as well as many have been converted to MT trucks. The sound of the wheel sets on the track provides some added realism as well. Stay cool and run steam...
