Bachmann E-Z Track Switches/Turnouts and Derailments

[jsmvmd]

Jim, You Dog!  You must have been referring to my wife where one answer causes her to ask 3 more questions, ad infinitum!

Dear Bob,

Great link! I was trying to find something similarly on Harold Minkwitz's site.  Harold is a great friend of Bachmann's and a sharp modeler.  Here is a link to one of his articles that shows an area where the closing rail transitions to the point and it is obviously filed.

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/track/83_switches/

Best Wishes,

Jack

P.S.  For you who may not have seen Harold's site, this link will take you to many of his articles how to modify Bachmann products for even better operation, or to narrow gauge scales, .

[rustyrails]

Several fellows have mentioned weight.  It is important and all cars should be weighted to the same standard.  If my (sometimes faulty) memory serves me correctly, HO scale cars should be weighted 1 oz plus 1/2 oz for each inch of length.  So a 40 foot car, which is about 5 1/2 inches long,  should weigh about 3 1/2 oz.  This has always been a "close enough" standard for me.  Differences of 1/4 to 1/2 oz don't seem to be significant. 

I agree also with the guys who mentioned wheel gauge...I use KaDee wheel sets almost exclusively and have VERY FEW derailments.  Metal wheels seem to stay cleaner, too. 

Rusty

[Jim Banner]

We all know that trucks have to be a little bit loose so that they can rock fore and aft and from side to side to make up for slight irregularities in the track.  But do we ever check that the car as a whole can rock a little side to side without lifting any wheels off the rails?  I have had a couple of cars over the years which had twisted bodies so that they could not rock, even though the trucks were loose enough.  The solution was easy - strip off the details and chuck the body.  It was figuring out what the problem was that was tough.

Incidentally, putting the car on a mirror soon shows what the wheels are doing when you rock the car.  This works pretty well with a regular mirror but it works even better with a front silvered mirror.  I got a front silvered mirror from my friendly Ford truck dealer.  It seems that when one of the little motors used for adjusting the mirror gives out, they replace the whole mirror.

Jim

[Yampa Bob]

There is one thing I am picky about on my railroad. When I watch a train go down the straight and around the curves, I don't want to see any car shaking, wiggling, oscillating, waddling, rocking or any other form of gyration.

After much study and experimentation I have learned how to set up a car so it will observe all the natural kinematics that apply to a railcar. The trick is keeping all the forces in balance, in other words achieving equilibrium.

I have one car, a very nicely detailed Rock Island boxcar with sliding doors, that liked to do the Watusi moving down the line. I tried everything possible, but it simply wouldn't behave. It never derailed, just seemed to have a mind of its own. Even studied it on a front surface mirror, everything seemed perfect.  Finally, I took the car completely apart, virtually "rekitting" it.

Turned out the two kingpin floor plates were not in the same plane, probably a molding defect. The floor wasn't twisted.  I lightly sanded lengthwise with a long sanding block to true up the plates and reassembled the car. Ran smooth as silk.

Apparently the uneven mating of the kingpin plates and the truck bolster flats created a "harmonic rock", or some kind of rotary oscillation.

Now, after all that fuss and bother, my wife pulled the car from the line because "it doesn't fit our roster".  Some days you just can't win. 

[jsmvmd]

Dear Bob,

Speaking of equilibrium, a local O gauge modeler found that to run his 50+ cars in a consist he had to juggle their order to prevent derailment.  His rolling stock is tuned, BYW. This never occurred to me since I usually run less than 10 cars in all scales.

A local club has one guy who will put 75+ HO cars together, car carriers that are "triple play" or however you describe three cars hooked with those two center bars.  Seems to run OK at slow speed.

Anyone with experience or thoughts on this?

Best Wishes,

Jack