I have four Rivarossi passengr cars with truck mounted couplers. If I add enought weight will they stay on the rails? Can I mix them with body mounted couplers? Thank you for any help you may offer.
I could ask you 25 questions about your cars and track and still not have a good answer for you. I think we need more details.
So the first and biggest question is... 1) Do they stay on the rails now?
2) ''Modern'' or ''Old Time'' passenger cars? (what is the era of the cars)
3) What kind of couplers are on them now?
4) Do you plan to run those four cars together in one train or split them up between two or three trains and then add other brands of passenger cars with truck or body mount couplers to make up a train or two or three of eight cars each more or less?
5) Just how good is your track laid?
6) What radius curves do you have?
7) What are your turnout/switch numbers?
8) Any grades if any are in your track work?
9) Will you need to back the car on to another track or through a turnout/switch or will the cars only go forward?
Not a question but, chances are good that your loco. has body mount couplers.
More weight (depending how much) will make the cars ''track'' better. But add more resistance which may not be a good thing.
I have some Rivarossi passenger cars, and run them with Athearn, Model Die Casting, and BranchLine passenger cars, along with some head-end express cars from various manufacturers.
I did change-out the undersize Rivarossi wheelsets, and replaced them with Kadee 36" wheelsets.Some of these cars have truck-mounted couplers, some body-mounted, but I do have fairly generous curves, so very few problems with derailments.
While I do add weight to pretty-well everything that runs on the rails, I experimented with making my Rivarossi "heavyweight" cars into true heavyweights.
For that, I cast some suitably-sized lead blocks, then put some in the washrooms at each end of the cars (most of my Rivarossi cars came with no interiors), and a bunch more in the clerestories, making each of them 15oz. or 16oz.They tracked even better, and their behaviour was a lot more prototypical...the best I can describe it was that the cars rolled ponderously...no shimmy, no shake, nothing toylike about them at all.
Later, when I took some of them off the layout to do some other work, I found that many of the Kadee wheelsets were dropping out of the trucks, and discovered that the ends of the Kadee axles were severely worn, as were the truck sideframes where the axles were seated.
I did remove some of the excess weight, but will be replacing the trucks with ones from Walthers, and will likely re-up the weights. I did manage to get replacement axles from Kadee
Here are a few photos...
I changed the majority of my Pullman cars into coaches, as my freelanced road is too short to need sleepers...(click on the photos for a larger image)
...and the interior, with seats from Pike-Stuff, and simple scratchbuilt washrooms (complete with lead weights)...
I usually add underbody details, too...
This one was originally a Rivarossi diner (also not all that necessary on a short railroad), so I shortened it and made it into a combine...
...this one was an Athearn coach, but with its sides replaced, it's a pretty-good wood-sided express car....
...this one was a Rivarossi coach, converted into a fairly accurate version of one of the CNR's horse express cars - used usually for either "show horses" or race horses...
This one was also a Rivarossi coach, but I converted it into a pretty-good representation of one of the CNR's "Mountain Observation Cars", for a friend...
...and I also run Model Die Casting's "Pullman Palace" cars like this full-length one...
...and shortened ones, too...
This one was originally a Rivarossi combine, but I decided that it would be a good starting point for a doodlebug....
It uses a Mashima motor on part of an Athearn F-unit frame, to drive the lead truck, also from Athearn.
Wayne
banjobenne1 If I add enought weight will they stay on the rails?
They should stay on the rails as-is.
I have ten Rivarossi heavyweight passenger cars I run with a A/B set of Athearn PAs. All have truck mounted horn-hook couplers, and they stay on the track just fine. I "test ran" them extensively on Kato HO scale unitrack down to 22" radius curves with no problems.
I have to wonder why yours are derailing.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Once there was a time when about 90% of my passenger fleet was the Rivarossi-made, imported by AHM, cars.
On every one I replaced the wheelsets with 33" Kadee wheels.
Rivarossi-truck by Edmund, on Flickr
This example shows the very old wheel design used by Rivarossi. You can see where the one axle was rubbing on the coupler mounting boss. This was a problem as the needlepoint axle ends wore into the soft plastic truck sideframes.
Rivarossi-old by Edmund, on Flickr
There were later runs where the wheelsets improved but I still replaced these with Kadee wheels. On some trucks you had to shave a little off the brake shoes. 36" wheels were too large unless you wanted to completely remove the brake shoe hanger.
Be sure you check the gauge of your wheels, too, if you haven't already.
Rivarossi-gauge by Edmund, on Flickr
There were more recent runs of Rivarossi 72' cars that have a completely different design, more in line with what Walthers uses on their Proto line, probably both made by Hornby which purchased the assets of Rivarossi a few years back.
IMG_8034_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
I've got 3 Rivarossi coaches and a baggage car. They were kind of spartan when I bought them. They had no lighting and only a bare set of interior seats. I bought Walthers lighting kits, which included new trucks with metal wireframes.
My cars came with couplers body mounted in swing boxes, so the cars are rated to take the 18-inch curves on my layout. I discovered they they meant 18, not 17 3/4, when I checked one flex-track curve. I ended up pulling up the curve and fixing it.
While I had the shells off for lighting, I painted the interior and added some passengers.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Most all of my Rivarossi/AHM cars have interiors, I add weight in the vestibules (the rectangular 'peel and stick' weights) since the cars are pretty light. However, I don't do too much, just adding say 1 oz. on each end seems to work fine.
At one time, I had four sets of four Rivarossi 60' passenger cars. I used motive power with body mounted couplers with no problem. Never ran all 16 together since each set was a different road name, but I am certain that they would run together trouble free.
But, running those cars in reverse by backing up the motive power? Well, that's another story.
Rich
Alton Junction
Hi Banjobenne1,
Always enjoyable seeing passenger car topics popping up.
Good answers above from fellow forum members.
I'll just add that a few years back I modified my Rivarossi Budds with metal wheels and filled the cavities in the underframe with BB pellets which were covered with glue. I kept the stock trucks but switched to knuckle couplers (I forgot what number). They track well, run in trains mixed with Walthers cars, and roll like skates!
This is a unit I metalized and weathered. Although basically they're generic Budd units, Imho they look decent with a few simple upgrades and they are VERY EASY to paint strip.
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
I believe all of the 'old' Rivarossi (AHM) cars first offered in the 1960s were full 80' length, except for cars (like say the head end cars and heavyweight coaches) where the prototype car was shorter; they weren't 'shorties' like say Athearn passenger cars.
Those cars were completely different than the Rivarossi / Hornby / Walthers 60' cars that came out a quarter century later. Oddly enough, those 4 cars were based on cars that really were only 60' long, so technically weren't "shorties" either...although they were pretty short.