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Adjusting the Weight of Cars
Bill has a question for readers:
“If the cars were heavier, or some of them heavier, would it help the whole lot of them stay on the track better? Or is it generally going to take track cleaning or adjusting to solve most of these issues?”
3 Responses to Adjusting the Weight of Cars
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Bill The NMRA has standards of what a model railroad car should weigh. But even going without those standards cares of the same length should weigh in the neighborhood of each others weight. Longer cars will need some more. If you look at some of the older beginners sets the cars are real light and as they go over switches and things the jump around. I just do it by feel and I am generally close. If they are too light and you have a lengthy train going around a curve, it those light cars are in the middle of the train they will have a tendency to pull off the track. If a coupler pin catches a switch even momentarily the the center of the train might pull off. I know those coupler pins were checked already but they get loose sometimes.
The Rose Hulman Student model railroad club thought they would weight their coat cars to a scaled full load of 120 tons trying to be accurate. and when I pulled out the weights one day it was loaded big time. It was kind of strange the engines could only pull 2 cars. What they forgot was the model engines did not have the traction power as the real proto type engines. and the model engines do not have the engine power to compete in scale to the real ones. In other words, I can pull 40 HO Cars with 2 engines but to represent the modern cars and engines they are pulling sometimes over 100 cars with 2. Our Model just cannot do that. I am up to four engines on level tracks to compete with the same length of a proto type train.
If you have your cars too heavy and you load them on a lengthy train the couplers take a beating especially the plastic ones. Your car wheels will take a beating at the axle points if you are running the cars too heavy. The NMRA has the standards of what cars should weigh and that is a good estimate. But remember that after you weigh the cars and you load them up with loads, Are you really over loading your models? So weigh it as you are going to run it.
from Newman
I wanted to say more a while ago but got pulled to cooking hamburgers out in the cold on the grill. Brrrrr. The main thing is have a consistency with all your cars. I have a very light wood model of an older gondola car with a wood floor. It works well on the layout as I have fairly smooth tracks but what I intend to do is make stone blocks from a quarry like marble or Granite which even made out of tile slabs can get real heavy quick So I want a light car for this load. I plan to have 2 slabs per car. Yes I should have plastic slabs of stone but these after cutting them on a table stone cutter, They had really good slick sides on the slabs. If I was to do that with plastic I would have to cover them with some kind of rock paper covering. If I find it I might try it but I doubt if I can get the same effect. That means to run this car empty I have to be a little more careful both in placement in the train and how gentle I run it. Most train layouts have very sharp curves Many of you run 18 inch radius curves. My main lines are between 28 to 38 radius curves and in respect to the prototypes this is still a sharp curve. But they work well for longer trains in modeling for the space we all have to do it. Yes there are Standards and you will find them on the NMRA Web sight somewhere . Many like to make flat car tractor loads and make them so they use every inch of space as the proto’s do but just remember if you are going to load them up then the loads need to be made lighter to effectively be within a scale loaded weight. I watched a model Railroad club verifier was real picky with the standards the club used but but each car was very consistent. You don’t have to be that particular for everything to work well. Just be consistent and in the ballpark and everything will work well After you have adjusted cars for a while it is almost evident whether they are close or not just by picking them up. from Newman
mr atkinson is right you should be careful how much weight you use i try to stay close to the 4 oz per car range but sometimes go over some. also if you add weight split it in to two mount it over your trucks this was you even it to both ends of the car . some times i use bird shot pick up from a reload gun shop. glue it into a small cap if i put it in a box car. also glues good under flat car between the ribs.