Back in May 2021 I posted “What is it with Six-Wheel Trucks on Passenger Cars?” I have solved the problem.
My trackwork was not the issue (though I did tweak some things), it was with the nature of the Walthers Heavyweight passenger cars. To cut to the chase. They are supposed to operate on a 24-inch radius, they do not, or at least they all do not.
I was having trouble operating them on a 32-inch radius, a 30-inch radius, and a 28-inch radius. You can see the steps I took to try and solve this problem in the previous post along with a lot of good suggestions. However, I kept having trouble.
I thought if these cars are advertised to run on 24-inch radius, then let me test each of them on set track of that radius. Much to my surprise I found that the coaches all worked fine, as too the baggage cars, the RPOs, the diner, and some of the sleepers. The problem cars were the observation car, the solarium car, and one of the sleepers. When I compared them closely, turning them upside down, I noticed that the coaches all had notches in the center sill allowing for the truck to swing more. And all the non-problem cars had trucks that could easily swing out more than the problem cars.
I checked this forum and several other train forums and saw several people mentioning the need to trim the center sill.
I decided to experiment with the solarium car and trimmed back the center sill on both ends to allow the truck to swing out more. That solved about 80 percent of the problem. I then added 1 oz of weight to the back to solarium, now it runs forward and backwards 100 percent of the time. I did the same thing to the observation car, and voila, it now runs like a charm. The sleeper car started to work fine as soon as I trimmed the center sill back, no added weight was necessary.
You only notice the trimmed center sill if you turn the car over or watch it very closely if it is going by slowly. Hardly a sacrifice in accuracy for getting reliably running.
Now I can backup my whole passenger train on the wye and then go forward without any derailments. I still have to go slow when doing this, but then I believe a real train would also go slow doing this maneuver.
What else did I learn? No matter how careful I was placing the Rapido Uncouplers, I now find that I need to add many more. I am simply not going to do this. The Rapido Uncouplers I have in place handle about 60 percent of my passenger car uncoupling needs, especially, in hard-to-reach places. I am just going to use my fingers until I find something that works as well as a skewer does on freight cars. Too bad the Rix magnet uncouple is not wide enough. I welcome your suggestions.
I also learned that even on a small layout, it can be fun switching passenger cars. For example, I have the Chippewa pick up the diner car in Green Bay on its way to Ontonagon. After turning the train on the why, I have the diner car dropped off again so it can be restocked on the commissary track. I do a similar operation with the RPO or express refrigerator cars. It is sure a lot more fun when I am not fighting constant derailments.
Yes, things are better without derailments. I have a set of Rivarossi passenger cars rated for 18 inch curves. I found out that they don't work on 17 3/4 curves. Yes, I tore up that track an relaid it.
I've usually found that just being a total fussbudget about perfect trackwork is the best policy, but making sure those long passenger cars work as advertised is important, too.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Mystifying, and analysis-defying, problems with reliable running is the Great Bane in our hobby. There's a steep learning curve the first few months, followed by a more gradual and grinding gradient for the one-offs that inevitably follow from year-to-year....thereafter. Ever after.
Amen.
I'm glad you solved it. It builds character in our hobby.
I have had more problems with the Walthers lightweights although that could be simply because I have more of them. I have sworn off ever buying Walthers passenger cars for that reason. There is simply no excuse for putting out premium priced RTR cars that the modeler has to fix before they are useable.
I am going to check to see if the center sill is the problem on the lightweights as well. I also don't care about the appearance of the underside of any rolling stock. The most important thing with any piece of equipment is operational reliability.