Do You Add Weight to Your Rolling Stock?

[brianel027]

Steve, instead of weight I remove and reattach the trucks on nearly every piece of rolling stock on own, postwar or otherwise. I have found the main culprit for derailments is the wobble of the trucks. When you are pushing a train backwards (exp. on 027 curves) the pressure is on the couplers of each truck. With this pressure, if the trucks are loose, it will cause the truck to work forward, raising the inside wheel of that truck and thus causing the car to derail.

Making my modifications almost completely eliminates the need for weight in rolling stock. The except may be a car with roller pickups when the roller may be bouncing the car off the track on switches or curves.

But on engines, I always add weight. Especially with the lightwieght types of locos, like the Lionel Industrial Switchers where I add substantial weight. My nephew has one of the little Lionel 8700 Rock Island Docksider Steamers. As it came, it barely pulled any cars. With modifications to the traction tire and mcuh added weight, that little loco now can pull up to 15 cars with die cast trucks. It easily pulls a car of 8-10 cars with no problems.

Two other things can contribute to derailments on rolling stock: tight or small coupler openings (the space inside the closed knuckle). If these are small, when connected to another car, the coupler will not swing freely inside eachother. The other culprit is uneven wheel gauge... I have found this especially when buying metal fast angle wheels in bulk that are not made by Lionel. The ones I have gotten I believe were Korean knockoffs. I could see just by lining up the wheels on a table, that the gauge (space between the wheels) was all over the place.

In this case, what you need to do is to be sure that the same pair of wheels on the same truck have identical wheel gauge. The gauge can vary some from truck to truck, BUT not on the same truck.

Again, my observations are based on 027 track operation.

[spankybird]

Hi Steve,

I have added weight to some of my rolling stock and even some of the engines. I did not know of a rule of thumb for this. If the car was having problem on curves or going thru turnouts, I would add some weight.

It has seems to work for me.


tom

[ChiefEagles]

Had a couple of real light pieces that I did because they wanted to derail when backing in turnouts and coupled to long trains. My fishing weights come in handy there. Normally, unless operating problems, no.

[Anonymous]

I was explaing about the NMRA's recomended practice of adding weight to rolling stock with a friend, good guy he bought all of my HO so he has a heavy investment in my O toy equipment. [;)]. He had asked why the HO kits I had assembled were so much heavier than the ones he assembled. Took him to their web site and showed him the recomendation and explained how I had used self adhesive automotive wheels weights to bring them up to the recomended weight. While there I noticed the recomended practice for O was a beginning weight of 5oz with an additional weight of 1oz added for each 1" of body length.

If this practice is followed a lot of rolling stock would weigh close to or more than 16oz. I checked a few pieces and have found some as much as 8oz light. I have not made a weight check on everything but am wondering if anyone follows this practice. While it made a signifigant improvement in reliability and rolling characteristics of my old HO, I haven't seen the need for it in O toy.

Your opinion?

Take care,
Steve