Thanks so much!  I went to hobby express in cranberry and got some bachmann metal wheels.  Cleaned the track again and ran it for an hour.  No issues as of yet. Running nice and smooth and quiter. 

I'll upgrade to nickle track for next Christmas. As well as get some of the contact cleaner!

Thanks.  Yes it is the 0-6-0.  I'll take a look when I get home and make sure the tender and other cars are the same wheelsets. 

Do I need to upgrade the trucks as well, or will the plastic trucks and metal wheelsets work fine together?

I'm getting a lot of dirt on the track, needing to clean it after an half an hour or so of use.  The two things I was encouraged to do was change to metal wheels and upgrade to nickel track.  Or send the train in to be looked at.

Thanks for the help!

https://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=258_269_270&products_id=1807

I have the Union Pacific 4432 and wanted to upgrade the plastic wheels to metal.  Would they all be 33 inch? Are bachmann smells the best for the upgrade?  Totally new to all this,  so any advice is appreciated!

Thanks everyone.

If I upgraded to nickle track,  it's bachmann ez track the best to go with our are there other brands i should look at as well?  I like the raised bed of the ez track.

But should I have to replace a track piece on a train that is 1 year old and has a little use?  This would be the 2nd piece that needs replaced out of a 12 piece track.  I thought Bachmann trains were better then that?

Thanks Fred.  So I did move the piece,  cleaned it again as well as the train wheels.

I ran it a good half hour.  It started hesitating again towards the end of the half hour,  not horrible,  but noticeable. 

The piece it was hesitating on was the same piece as before,  though in it's new location.

The track does sit on a piece of plywood,  so it is fully supported.

In November of 2023 we received as an early Christmas gift Union Pacific 4432 HO scale.  After a few weeks, the train was skipping/hesitating only on one piece of track.  Bachmann sent us a new piece and all was fine the rest of that season. We brought the train out again this past Thanksgiving and all was fine for a few weeks. 

Then the train started skipping/hesitating on one piece of track again (I have no idea if it's the replacement piece or not). I cleaned the track and all was well till this past Friday.  It was coming to a stop on that one track piece.  I cleaned it again and it worked.  Turned it on again yesterday (Wednesday) for my nephew and it started hesitating and coming to a stop again on the same piece.  I cleaned it again and it worked a few laps then starting hesitating again.

Am I doing something wrong?  This is our first train and we really don't run it a lot.  What is causing this problem with one piece of track at a time?  Visually the track piece looks fine.  I know you can upgrade to nickel track, but for a train that is only a year old and has very little use, I would not expect this many problems.

Thanks!

Actually if I can piggyback on this thread.  I too am new to this hobby and just received my first train.  it's a Bachmann HO scale Union Pacific.  Right now we have the standard circle track going around our Christmas Village.  I really wanted to try the below layout in the link, I call it the pretzel.  I'm not sure how to convert it to HO scale?  Nor what additional pieces we would need?  Our platform is roughly 42" x 42", so I'm not sure if the pretzel would give our village more room or less...

Any help is greatly appreciated!

pretzel layout

As an early Christmas present we received the Union Pacific 4432 HO scale in November.  It's our first train and we love it.

It says to lubricate the engine every 24 hours of use.  We didn't hit that mark yet, but in a couple weeks the train will be packed away till November.

Do we wait for the 24 hour use mark to lubricate, or lubricate before putting it away or after pulling it out?

Any tips would be greatly appreciate it.

P.S. we do have the Bachmann track cleaner and used that as the train was stalling on one track.  It works great now, even better than out of the box.