Paul-
Thank you for your comments above.
I offer two observations:
The main offender for derailments on my layout is a hybrid that appears to be too rear heavy regarding the balance point.
I just tried the metal shim suggestion and it appears that I do have one brass engine whose wheels do remain in contact with a smooth surface when a shim is inserted under one driver at a time. It is a recent Boo Rim produced model. I do expect my older brass would perform as you described above.
John
I would like to relate a somewhat educational anecdote related to irregular track.
Tuesday night we were at the train club packing up the layout for a show this weekend. Before dismantling the layout it was decided that we should run a locomotive over all the track to make sure everything was OK. One of the members had just purchased a supposedly new 6 axle diesel so that was the locomotive we chose to do the test with.
The locomotive absolutely refused to run over one point on the track. It derailed every time but only going from right to left. It didn't matter which way the locomotive was pointed. That resulted in some head scratching because there had never been a problem at that location before, regardless of what was being run. There was a rail joint where the locomotive was derailing but the joint was dead straight and level. We checked it with a straight edge. There were about 10 guys all standing around scratching our heads and offering every imaginable cause for the problem.
After observing the locomotive as it ran through the section of track we could see that it was tilting ever so slightly just before it got to the rail joint. Further examination of the track revealed a barely perceptable high spot about six inches to the right of the rail joint where a feeder was soldered to the track, and there was a really tiny spot at the rail joint where there wasn't enough solder to completely fill the joint. We could see that as the locomotive's rear truck ran over the 'bump' the front truck was lifting a wheel just high enough for the flange to catch the rail where the joint wasn't completely filled causing it to climb over the track. The distance between the high spot and the rail joint was just right to cause the problem given the length of the locomotive.
The track was loosened and a tiny bit of the road bed was scraped away, and lo and behold the problem went away.
The rather obvious point is that if you are going to model some irregular track you should do it very carefully, and you should make sure that everything that will eventually run over it will stay on the tracks. There can't be any sudden deflections. If the track is going to have a dip in it the transition from level track to the dip has to be gradual.
We did discover that the locomotive we used to test the track had filthy wheels. It left very black streaks on the paper towel used to clean the wheels. How much the dirty wheels contributed to the derailment problem is difficult to tell, but the dirt certainly wasn't helping. The club member who had just bought it had been told that it was new. Obviously not! The annoying part about that was that he had purchased it from a local dealer who everybody at the club has dealt with.
So, model your 'wobbles' without wobbles!
Regards,
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I like smooth trackwork on all mainlines. While maybe not the most accurate appearance for branchlines or shortlines, it gives me a sense of well built model trackwork. That is more satisfying to me than seeing freight cars shimmy at slow speeds.
For industrial spurs, I solder together the scraps from building the mainlines out of flex track. Lenghts of two to six inches are used on the spurs, and that many short pieces stuck together are never going to be perfectly straight at the joints. Burying the track in dirt or weeds helps hide the joiners and the unstraight joints provide a little wiggle to the freight cars.
- Douglas
Doughless:
Doughlessthe unstraight joints provide a little wiggle to the freight cars.
That's where the 'wiggles' should be. Just to be sure, I'm not advocating doing it on main lines.
Good use of track cut-offs by the way.
DoughlessBurying the track in dirt or weeds helps hide the joiners and the unstraight joints provide a little wiggle to the freight cars.
That's been my approach after my experiment with denting a section of track.
While my "bad" track worked quite well I never repeated the idea because it didn't look prototypical for such track when compared to photos I took of dented and wobbly track in a urban industrial area back in the late 70s..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
In response to Paul's comments above about the sprung drivers of his brass models being too rigid to help on uneven track, I just this morning tested a 1980 Samhongsa produced T&P 2-8-2 by putting a little metal shim under each drive wheel, and I found that the springs were indeed flexible enough to allow the other wheels to still touch. Furthermore, in actual performance on the layout, at slow speed, I can watch each individual axle traverse up and over a just slighly high track joint, one at a time, while the other wheels still touch the rail. So the particular brass models I have do perform more smoothly than the unsprung hybrids.
When I re-worked this older, re-motored Samhongsa model of a B&M B-15, I installed NWSL's "wimpy" springs.
Unfortunately, the locomotive's weight was too much, allowing it to bottom-out and effectively returning the locomotive to the as-good-as-unsprung condition which it had with the original too-stiff springs. It ran fine either way, though, so I re-installed the originals and will save the wimpy ones for some other candidate.
Wayne