The spanning area of the 53ft trailer from the hitch area of the A car to the rear of trailer on the B car (Middle Spanning 53 Trailer) as to be flush deck. The best operation is the Triple-57 it's already a flush deck.
Triple-53 Long Runner Problem The problem is this the rubrail.If you look at the car with all 3 53's on then the middle trailer from the hitch to the rear of thr trailer is a flush deck.The real life railroad as no rubrails there either. Remove the rubrails of the middle trailer from hitch to the rear of trailer and that should work if not and you still want to run a Long Runner Flat Car then I would try the Triple-57 because the Triple-57 is built for that.Hope that helps.
Sorry, not true. The TTEX 353XXX-354XXX series Long Runners (like the one being modeled here) do have inboard rubrails (even though they are referred to as flush-decks). Here's some photos...... TTEX 354095 photo - intermodal photos at pbase.com Removing the inner rubrails altogether on a flush-deck car where the spanning trailer's bogies ride and pivot will result in the trailer eventually falling off the car. A 161XXX series Triple-57 is another option as you suggest, however I actually added inner rubrails on mine so the trailer would center nicely after the car came out of a turn. It turns out that several Triple 57's had/have inner rubrails in the bulge area too, perhaps for the same reason (without them, it is quite likely the trailer's bogies would work their way to one side of the bulge area and take the car way out-of-balance. Here's a real Triple-57 with inner rubrails in the bulge area.... TTEX 161196 photo - intermodal photos at pbase.com Trust me, my suggestions above are the way to go. Russ
Triple-53 Long Runner Problem The modeler that has the problem with the Triple-53 operation.I had the same problem with mine.I tried everything and I still had problems.I removed the rubrail in the areas I talking about the operation was great. The rubrails is the problem,you can leave them where they are but you are still going to have the problems.I'm getting ready to retire my Triple-53 once the Triple-57 Spine Cars and or the All-Purpose 5-Unit Spine Cars comes out.Do whats best but I had the same issue and I fixed it by removing the rubrails after trying everything else.
Tallboy - thanks for the feedback. As you correctly surmised, the inner rub rails are indeed the problem. But, as Russ notes, removing them from a flush deck unit like this would leave nothing to guide the trailer at all. The solution of using Atlas wheel bogies seems to be working quite well, at least with 20" curves. Cheers, Gary P.S. Thanks for the photo links Russ. Some great pictures in there for future reference!
I messed around a few years ago and scratch built some 89' flats (they were not the most detailed of things) . Could not get the microtrain flats at that time. I moved the rub rail in slightly under the trailer on the triple 53 flats and then used a long, small diameter brass machine screw up through the floor and into the trailer bogie. That worked out pretty good and they would track around a 14 or 15' radius curve I had at the time.
