Thanks Darrel. I'm familiar with all of these points, and agree with most of them. As for the point about adding weight (effectively thinkening the axle) defeating the P:64 look... that is true if the axle is also a main focus of the look and not primarily the wheels (as it is for me), because the axles of coupled, moving cars can't be easily seen in the first place... nowhere as easily as the wheels.
But just for the record... I don't have any problematic cars that have excessive derailing problems... that is not the purpose of my posting. I am only, as always, looking for ways to improve what we have for the purpose of heading off any possible, future problems. And as far as I can tell, adding a little weight to wheels by weightint their axles would surely decrease the likelihood of a derailment du to a wheel "climbing" on top of a rail due to friction on curves or turnouts. Improvement by PREVENTION... that's my objective. John Degnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Seaboard Air Line 19000-19499 series, Class B-7 40' Single-Door, "Turtle-back" Box Car in S Scale AND HO Scale!!! http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/SALRoundRoofBoxCarProject.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: Darrell Smith To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 9:03 AM Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: AXLE Weights... John, My experience has been that poor tracking of wheels, including fine scale, is not due to lack of weight. Instead it is caused by either or both of two other factors: the track, or the trucks. If your trackwork is of any decent quality, usually the problem is the trucks themselves. First, double check that the wheels are in guage, and equally centered on the axles so that the truck is not hunting sideways. I like to check this with the truck on the track and off the car so I can see the alignment of the wheels to the track. Wheels, including prototype and finescale, are designed with a taper to the tread. It is this taper that enables the wheel to "self center" between the rails without depending totally on the flanges. Granted with tight curves the flanges are going to be the only thing keeping the wheels on track. But the problem comes in when other forces don't allow the wheels to self-align. This is usually caused by trucks that are too stiff in their car mounting, or have no "equalization". A truck that has sideframes that flex in relation to the bolster, even just a little, enables all wheels to maintain contact with the track at all times. This helps considerably. A rigid truck can actually lift one or more wheels off the track in certain situations. It is also necessary for one truck to be free to flex at the bolster laterally to the car. Look at the "Smooth Rider" about 1/4 of the way down this page to see what I'm talking about: http://www.proto87stores.com/p87stores/index.htm#HOME Also, if the truck bolster is too stiff to the car bolster, the truck simply won't swing freely enough to allow the wheels to track. This problem is not necessarily the screw attachment being too tight, but can be a rough bearing surface combined with too much car weight. Burs, oxidation, dried oil, and too large a mounting surface can all be problems. Again using the concept of the above "Smooth Rider" will help considerably. If all the above truck problems are seen to and a car still derails (almost always in a particular location) I would suspect a track problem. Misaligned rail ends, low spot, high spot, misaligned flangeway, kink, gauge too tight, gauge too loose, are all potential problems, the more-so with the finer standards of the wheels. My understanding of using Proto:64 wheels is that they are meant to give a prototypical appearance. It seems to me that adding weights to the axle would defeat that. Anytime a truck is mounted on a car, there is enough weight on the wheels, NMRA standards be da*#ed. It is the necessary ability of the wheels to maintain free contact with the rails that is the problem. Darrell Smith --- In [email protected], "John Degnan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My ventures of dabbling in Proto:64 has given birth to an idea that might be useful in Standard:64 as well... I've heard a lot recently about getting cars equallly weighted to help the trackability of P:64 wheels... but I'm wondering about the approach of weighting ONLY the wheelsets instead of the whole model? There should be some way to glue some sort of weight to the axle of freight car wheelsets... possibly in the sense of sheathing or encasing the axle with some weighty substance. The added weight would make the wheel less inclined to "climb" the rail during tense pushing or pulling operations (through turnouts, up or down inclines, etc.) where the flanges against the rail cause friction. But whatever this weight substance may be (lead? metal?), it could come in the shape of a half-round tube and either run the whole length of the axle (back of left wheel to back of right wheel) for more additional weight, or be cut shorter and just run a short distance on the axle for less additional weight. > > My thoughts are that weighting the axles instead of the whole model would be the best approach to solving the rail-climbing problem, because weighting an entire model usually requires balancing the model on both sides or modifying the model in some way to receive the weights, and since axles are, by nature, already centered, balancing won't be a problem, and no modifications would be required to the model. Any thoughts? > > > John Degnan > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Seaboard Air Line 19000-19499 series, Class B-7 > 40' Single-Door, "Turtle-back" Box Car in S Scale AND HO Scale!!! > http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/SALRoundRoofBoxCarProject.htm > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
