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Metal wheels certainly do add to the senses of running trains, however (There is always a downside to everything) metal wheels can drive you nuts hunting down intermittent short circuits. The club I am in, Prince William County Model Railroad Club, (www.pwmrc.org) is a modular club. One of the inherant problems of a modular club is humped joiner tracks between each module. This is usually due to swollen road bed or plywood at the end of the module. At one club show, I brought a few gondollas of which I had added metal wheels. The design of the gondollas is much like most rolling stock with a metal plate on the undercarriage for added weight. When the gondolla went over some of the more exaggerated humped module joiner tracks, the gondolla wheel truck tilted enough to cause both wheels to come in contact with the metal plate and cause a short from one rail to the other. Because of the momentum of the train, the short was only long enough to cause the train decoders to reset and all running trains only stammered for a moment. It was only when the train was running slower did the short stay intact and shut down the railroad. Hand moving the train removed the short. This went on for some time until I was taking my train off the layout when I realized what was causing the problem. The results where tack marks on the wheels and the under carriage metal plate. Another problem you can stumble into, at least I did, is reinstalling metal wheels in metal trucks, i.e. Kadee metal sprung trucks. If you look closely at the metal wheels you will see one wheel is insulated from the axel to prevent shorts. If you invert one axel in the truck, a short will occur when you put the car on the track. The track on the D&J Railroad is level all the way around, so I can enjoy the sound of long trains with all metal wheels. Ken, D&J Railroad, Stafford, VA
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