Good point, Dave. Some folks who use car cards for operation include 'incident' cards to represent special situations like that. I have some cars placarded with "Unload other side/Unload this side", and when they come out of staging, they may or may not be properly oriented for delivery, depending on the customer.I also have signs along the right-of-way denoting restrictions, usually for plows and similar equipment, but a simple rule book covers restricted-use cars and car routing, usually for excess width or height - I deliberately left tight clearances in some places to keep things interesting, and most of the track has posted speed limits.
Wayne
doctorwayne
I found your suggestion that the cracked wheel was a way to model wheels with flat spots to be very interesting. That presents a possible new opportunity for operations. Planting a defective wheel or two amongst your freight cars could be a way to test your operators' observation skills. Instead of labelling the car as defective they would have to figure it out on their own. Having to move a car on to the RIP track instead of getting it to its destination could add some excitement to the session.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Many years ago, not too many years after plastic wheels on steel axles became common, I had one on an Athearn car which split from rim to axle. It never affected the way the car ran or caused any problems - the sound it made was my HO scale version of a flat wheel. I think that I eventually replaced it, but I'm not a big fan of metal wheels, as my experience with them dates back to brass wheels on metal axles in cast metal sideframes. The only free rolling ones in those days were from Central Valley, pretty much beyond my means at that time.When the first decent-quality plastic wheels were introduced, they were in sprung metal sideframes, and were followed not too long after that by plastic wheels in unsprung Delrin trucks - smooth rolling and quiet. One notable exception was Lindberg, with sprung Delrin trucks and plastic wheels, with exceptional rolling qualities for the time.While I have quite a few cars with metal wheels, I use them only because that's the wheels with which they came. Most of my rolling stock has plastic wheels, and except for the one mentioned, I've had no problems with them whatsoever.I do think their appearance is better than the metal ones - not that it's more realistic, but rather because it's less noticeable. Metal wheels, with their shiny treads, (other than those built to Proto87 standards or comparable standards in other scales) draw unnecessary attention to the fact that the treads are unprototypically-wide, and that the trucks are also overly-wide to accomodate the wide wheels.As for rolling qualities, the fact that those cars with metal wheels which roll better than cars with plastic wheels has little to do with the wheels and much more to do with better-engineered compatability between axle ends and plastic journals.
Apparently, it's not as rare as I thought. Upon closer examination, I found more sets that have split. They are all from old Blue Blox kits.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Hello All,
I purchased a set of "vintage" cars equipped with plastic wheels. Upon inspection the better one split while the others crumbled. Now I have a gondola load of scrap! Resins (plastics) have come a long way. The "vintage" wheels were over 30-years old and stored improperly. Not a big shock that they failed.
They were replaced with whatever wheels I had. Some were metal and some were plastic. All sets have performed admirably!
If you use a track cleaning solvent that is not plastic compatible I could see this early degradation occurring as well.
Regarding "free-rolling" trucks, resin or metal, John Allen, on this subject wrote:
"I don't want ‘em. Too many spurs on my railroad have some grade and I don't like putting something under the wheels to hold the cars... Free-rolling cars also push on the loco going downgrade, making the engine want to buck at slow speeds. No, I'd just as soon have wheels that have a little braking action."
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Wow. In fairness to plastic wheels and the guys who run them, I would think this particular problem can safely be called "very rare." There are many reasons to prefer metal wheels over plastic but this sort of deterioration is not usually listed as one of them!
By the way those of us "of a certain age" remember that when freight car frames were metal and wheels were metal and coupler draft gear and couplers themselves were metal, it was possible to have some truly peculiar and difficult to trace shorts because the short circuit could have its start at the locomotive and travel through a whole bunch of freight cars before finally creating the fatal short. Back then plastic trucks and wheels were thought to be the solution, not the problem. That was obviously well before Kadee has plastic couplers.
Dave Nelson
A few years back, I began a regimen for all new rolling stock; check weight, replacing non Kadee couplers with Kadees, checking coupler height, wheel gauge and replacing plastic wheels with metal ones. However, I still have stock that has plastic wheels from before I began this regimen. Today, I discovered another reason to replace the wheels. I started hearing a slight clunking sound when I ran a train. I finally narrowed it down to one car. It wasn't this bad, but it was cracked all the way to the axle.