Trying to figure out how much movement trucks should have. Have purchased the Kadee red fiber washers as some cars have metal washer(s) and will be installing fiber washers. Having wheel drop into frogs on atlas ns code 100 #6's. Purchased Cody Grivno's "Beginner's Guide to Locomotives and Rolling Stock. Was looking for any specific numberic amount of movement. Did not see any.
Is there any specified amount of numeric movement? Or any other method(s) to determine? As a side note, I replaced all wheels with metal Intermountain wheels and used Micro Mark truck tuner.
Not sure why you think you need to repalce metal washers with fiber ones. No washer is best, unless you need it for coupler height adjustment, in which case one washer is ok, if you need more than one, look to other methods of adjusting the coupler height as stacking up washers makes the truck too wobbly.
The most common adjustment is to give the car essentially a 3 point suspension, This involves tightening one truck and then backing out the screw so that it swivels freely but does not really rock side to side (if loose enough to swivel freely, it will rock SLIGHTLY). At the other end, do the same but back the screw off a little more so that the truck can rock a bit. The end result is the car will not wobbly like it's drunk rolling down the track, but if there is an irregular bit of track the truck or car can flex enough to follow the irregularity instead of having the flange ride up and over, which would cause a derailment.
Adjusting the trucks won't stop the wheels from dropping in the frog flangeways. That takes modification of the turnout itself. ANd absolutely making sure the wheels are in gauge. Just because they are fresh out of the package, do not assume. Any problem I've ever had with Atlas turnouts have been traced to wheels not being properly gauge, although mine have always been Code 83 versions.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I cured the "truck drop" in the frogs of my Atlas turnouts by adding a long thin triangle of 0.019" plastic. I believe Plastruct made what I used and it is a dark gray plastic that is almost invisible when installed.
This thickness perfectly matches the required height needed so the flanges run on the plastic insert and remain level without dropping down. I've done all mine and everything glides through like the frog isn't even there.
This works fine as long as none of your older engines and train cars have the old wheels with the "pizza cutter" flanges on them.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
San Diego club's standards for rolling stock: This video is a little dry but is full of great information. Somewhere around 3:50 it talks about how tight to make your trucks but you should watch the whole video because it deals with wheels also.
Mark R. I cured the "truck drop" in the frogs of my Atlas turnouts by adding a long thin triangle of 0.019" plastic. I believe Plastruct made what I used and it is a dark gray plastic that is almost invisible when installed. This thickness perfectly matches the required height needed so the flanges run on the plastic insert and remain level without dropping down. I've done all mine and everything glides through like the frog isn't even there. This works fine as long as none of your older engines and train cars have the old wheels with the "pizza cutter" flanges on them. Mark.
Evergreen sells black styrene sheet in .020 (and other) thickness: part number 9513
I just measured the flangeway depth on one of my turnouts: .046"
RP25 flanges are, yes, .025"
Old S-4 flanges are/were .035"
Some European and American flanges were, uh, deeper
So. If I only run RP25 wheels (which isn't much of a reach), I should be able to lay in a .020" piece and have near perfect non-drop-ability. Rolling stock with deeper flanges would bump, to varying degrees. Locomotives could be the big problem, as when they lift up during the bump, they could lose contact.
Oh, yes. My mainline turnouts are #10's. So the tendency to Do The Bump is pretty large.
Somethin' to think on,
Ed
That's assuming a 1 thou tolerance - which is why Mark recommend the .019 instead of .020, that gives you a 2 thou tolerance. Really the flange shouldn't roll on the turnout, the only part of the wheels that should contact horizontally should be the treads. Another place to tune up is the flangeway width of the guard rails. Atlas are generally way too wide. There's a flangeway width guide as part of the NMRA gauge, proper flangeway width as well as depth (too shallow is of course a problem - too deep really shouldn't be because the wheels should never drop off the head of the rail. A proper guard rail flangeway (the space in the frog is much harder to fix) will help keep the wheels positioned correctly to ride across the frog rather than fall in.