Wheel Flange and rail

[Marty Cozad]

Heres one for you narrow G folks. And NO I'm not tring to start anything. I was going through many old GRYs mags looking for a page that I had maked for something. As I was looking I remember all these folks telling how over sized wheel flanges are and rail is to large. Then I noticed many articals of "railistic hand spiked rail" of the right size. BUT being all shiny and aluminum with shiny steel wheels. Most who say its more realistic to be "scale" use very unrealistic colors to do it. And having seen many 1:1 wheels in photos, how deep are flanges suppose to be? And can they work well in our miniture world with 1:1 problems to deal with?
And no this is not aimed at Marc.[;)]

[mkblk]

I think you're absolutely correct, Marty. If model trains had scale flanges, they would never stay on the track! I would think that the only models (in any scale) with actual scale sized flanges would be static ones that you just looked at! Correct me if I'm wrong, but even RP25 flanges are oversize for HO, but closer to scale than what was previously offered. Old HO trains won't run well on code 83 track and not at all on code 70. Plus, many of us modeling "G" scale (in all its manifestations) tend to utilize radii that are far from realistic. The only way to keep 'em on the rails is deep flanges.

MK

[Anonymous]

Hay guys,

I use code 197 N/S rail, spikes & rail joiners from Old Pullman.
Code 197 is the smallest rail you can use without turning down the flanges on all your wheels. I run mostly Bachmann stuff and their flanges clear my spike heads by a 1/16".

I turned the plastic wheels down on a couple of Bachmann cars to about half there original size. These two cars track very well with few derailments, so one day I may turn down all my cars wheels.

Locomotives are another story, I'm too chicken and feer I may never get the locos back together again.

Another thing I do with my N/S rail is to spray the sides of the rail with gray paint primer to kill the shine. About half my rail was painted after being spiked in place, If some primer gets on the ties I just leave it there. After 10 years the paint on the rails is still holding.

Red or gray primer is used to paint the plastic and steel wheels on our cars.

OLD DAD