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Plastic Wheels Or Metal Wheels – What’s Best?
Here is a tip that Richard a member of the online model train club) shared with other club members:
Throw away plastic wheels and buy metal replacements if included in a kit. Metal wheels will generally run truer and with less resistance than injection molded mass produced plastic wheels. The price of metal wheels has dropped significantly in the last decade. Some of the grunge you have to clean from the rails is plastic residue from plastic wheels, metal wheels stay cleaner longer as does the rail.
Definitely avoid oiling track if you use plastic wheels even the famous Wahl Hair Clipper Oil… this will actually increase the amount of cleaning as the plastic wheels are affected by incompatible oil until the plastic wheel crumbles of course… there are plastic compatible oils made by LaBelle but I still would not recommend it as a practice.
When I started out the second time in the hobby, every time I bought a freight car kit I bought a set of kadees and metal wheels straight away. It can seem a hardship to have to buy 100 to 200 Kadees and 200 to 400 metal wheels all at once to upgrade your small freight car fleet. Buying them as you go is much easier especially your wallet. Remember, model railroaders always have many more locos and freight cars than they can actually run on their layouts at any one time.
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