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I'm interested in feedback from other garden railroaders on how much trouble you have with derailments and what types of cars/engines cause the most trouble. I thought I'd share my experiences as a starting point for the discussion. It's been my experience that the longer cars and engines cause the most trouble particularly on grades involving curves. I have spent countless hours leveling and making minor bank and grade change adjustments to get a car or engine to run. I use a mixture of 8 ft. and 10 ft. curves and found the problems occur equally on both. Shorter cars and engines operate flawlessly on this layout. As an example, I just received my new Aristo Dash-9 (what a beautiful engine). I couldn't wait to run it, so out I went eager to see this thing in action. I have about 300 ft. of track down and during the course of 1 lap (by itself no cars attached) it derailed THREE TIMES. I checked the trucks and couldn't find anything wrong. I repeated the test with the same results. This is the same track on which I just ran my SD-45s with no problems. I believe the biggest problem with these long cars and engines (particularly Aristocraft) is the limited amount of lateral rolling movement. By this I mean that when these long engines/cars experience a grade change on a curve, there is not enough give in the trucks to keep all the wheels on the rails and thus derailments occur. I bought and quickly sold a RDC-1 because I was experiencing these same problems and couldn't get it to operate consistently without derailing. Switches (LGB 8-ft, Aristo 10-ft, Aristo No. 6) are my second leading cause of derailments. I have found with experience that the best switch is "no switch". The No. 6s are by far the best and cause the least problems. I have simplified my layout to minimize the number switches to help reduce derailments. My question for the manufacturers is: "Do you test these engines, cars and switches on REAL layouts or just a perfectly flat oval at the facility?" I'm really curious to see if it's just me or do others experience these same problems. Thanks
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