First train!

Yay!! thanks for sharing your story, tha layout is looking great PK!

Great Video Paul

Great to see the progress on the layout. You really need to submit your boxcar idea and buzzer to the tips section of the magazine those are great ideas and I'll bet everyone building a layout could make use of them. I have already filed the Boxcar idea away for future use.

I would suggest adding weight to your cars. In addition check your wheel sets and use a truck tuner that you can get from micro mark on them. Any burs will be removed and they will roll much better. I would also check your couplers for excessive play and if it is found shim and tighten up some screws a bit to make sure they do not flex excessively. Check your truck screws as well as if they are too tight or too loose the car can wobble and things can bind causing some issues.

As a track work test I ran a 90 car train backwards around our club layout as fast as two Atlas H-16-44 locomotives could push it. The train ran up and down grades through turnouts, did not take diverging route at that speed, for nearly an hour. Many of the club members were impressed with that little feat. I have my cars heavier than the standard by at least an ounce, many more than that and all trucks have metal wheels and have had the truck tuner used to clean them out. Cars were a mix of Accurail, Branchline Blueprint and Yard Master, Round House, Athearn, AHM, Life Like, and likely some others Walthers, and Fox Valley. I have found that after I rework the cars especially the ready to disassemble kind they perform much better. My favorites are the Accurail and Branchline kits.

Nice

Well done Paul!  Congratulations!

I just woke up and my eyes aren't focusing well yet, so I didn't notice the wiggling you mentioned.  However, the first thing I check when I see that is the truck screws.  I've always heard to tighten one about as tight as it'll go while still allowing it to freely swivel, and tighten the other truck a little less, so as to allow some vertical play.  That's always worked well for me.  RTR cars are notorious for having both trucks tightened to the point where they will only swivel, which can often lead to derailments, but I believe having both trucks too loose can lead to the problem you describe.

Replies - Car Care

Guys, thanks for the replies.

Bill - appreciate the compliment. The other fantastic layouts I see here on MRH are challenging me to try and do my best on the new construction. 

Rob -

I clean up every truck with Micro Mark tool, use Intermountain metal wheel sets, and check their gauge too. I check the couplers for height and track clearance, but haven't given too much thought about excessive play in them. I'll have to look into that. 

I'm intrigued by the weight of your cars. I assume you're talking about the NMRA recommendations for car weight. You said most of your cars are heavier by at least an ounce? Do you just rough guess it, or use some kind of formula to determine how much weight to use for a given length car? I haven't weighted my cars at all, other than what they come with out of the box. Given the success you have had in running such a long train backwards, I'm definitely going to start adding some weight! I think you should submit an article to MRH describing in detail the work you do with your cars to make them run so well. I'm sure that would be of interest to many of the readers, especially the newer ones to the hobby.

Joe - Thanks for the info on tightening the truck bolster screws. I was never really sure how tight to put them. Maybe that's something else I can do while waiting for glue to dry on the helices I'm building. 

Servo Mounts

Hi Paul,

I'm looking at your servo mounts and if I understand you correctly, the one in the second photo works better than the first because you have the hole in the bottom which acts like a fulcrum-- I get that part. But why not simply flip the mount around in the first photo so it's "covering the hole" and then drill a small hole through the mount to create the same "small hole as a fulcrum" situation? I also wondered whether the vertical versus horizontal throw on the servo was limiting your overall "throw range", especially with respect to the fulcrum / hole. 

Did you try any alternate mountings or anything like what I'm suggesting? I think there is a way to get what you're wanting yet.

John

Nice

Looks like you have put some hard work in!  Soldered my wiring but have considered suitcase connectors as an option. 

Joe

@ John

John,

Thanks for your suggestion. I'm not sure it would quite work though. I fixed the piano wire through two holes on the servo actuator arm so it was rigidly fixed, much as you might do with a slow motion stall switch machine like Micro Mark sells. So mounting it like that I don't think I could have it gone through a hole in the base as you suggest, otherwise wouldn't it bind? I suppose I could have just mounted the piano wire to the lower hole on the actuator arm and let it pivot before going through a hole in the base. Then it would act somewhat like a Tortoise switch machine linkage. But since I had the old Tam Valley mounts laying around which I had already paid for and knew worked from experience on my last layout, I didn't do too much fiddling around. I wanted to keep pushing forward on other areas of layout construction. 

@ Joe

Joe,

On my last layout I only used suitcase connectors for the track feeders, and soldered all the other connections on my track bus and main bus. At the time I felt that would give me better electrical connections, but it was a real pain making all those solder connections. Especially since they weren't always in the easiest place to get to. The suitcase connectors proved so reliable though that I decided on this layout to eliminate the hassle of soldering completely and use suitcase connectors throughout. So far so good. So long as I'm careful on installation, I think things will be just fine electrically. 

Paul, thanks for the nice

Paul, thanks for the nice comment about my cars. None of it was my own idea. Many of the things go back many years to a couple of books printed at least 40 years ago by Kalmbach I think. I do not believe they are still in print although sections of them would still be applicable to lots of people.

Many of the products in these books are rare finds today. However, they detail many of the techniques I use and any article by me would likely be plagiarism or could be construed as such by anyone holding the copyright. In addition to those tips I spoke to a guy in one of our local hobby shops who mentioned he puts weight in his cars so they simulate loaded cars, he is quite pleased with his extensive collection of cars as he has more than 1000 of them. After speaking to him for a while and talking about things model railroad related I decided I would try adding weight to my cars. I believe Mike Confolone (sp) has done something similar on his New England layout and from what I hear his equipment both looks and runs great.

The issue with couplers showed up when I was backing my long trains through yard throats. It seems some of the more vintage freight cars have lots of room in their coupler boxes when the Kadee whisker couplers are used allowing for both up and down and twisting in the coupler boxes. I also noticed that on some cars with excellent in my opinion coupler boxes the couplers would move suddenly from the center position to full side deflection and cause the car to jerk violently.

To correct these issues I used some coupler shims to fill the larger voids and when needed change the coupler heights so they hit the standard gage that kadee sells. I think the shims are from Micro Mark and come in different thicknesses. I also made sure to clean all burs and irregularities from the inside of the coupler boxes, some of them had some that went unnoticed during assembly. I had all covers drilled and so 2x56 screws could be installed and checked the heads for clearance. I found some that would rub on axles on occasion and changed them to flat head screws.

After doing those things I checked the trucks for free turning and made sure one had a very slight amount of extra play so it could absorb the occasional track irregularity.

A special note on Accurail Tripple Hoppers. These are my favorite hoppers. They have very nice detail for a shake the box kit and hidden weights that get covered up with detailed slope sheets. If either of the screws that attach the trucks or the coupler covers are too tight one can have binding in the couplers and erratic performance, this is easily fixed with a screw driver and loosening of the screws till freedom of movement returns.

In adding additional weight to cars I began by taking a page from Branchline and putting a second steel nut of 5/8 size on top of the existing nuts that are attached to the car floor in the ends of the car. this I believe adds about another ounce and 1/2 to each car. Later on I was told of a cheap way to add weight to the cars if the weight is concealed. American pennies are ten to the ounce and much cheaper than any weight one could buy. Banks transport them for free and they are available every where at face value. Walthers Goo or similar contact cement types will hold them securely. I typically add twenty cents to box cars and similar closed cars. On coal cars I add the weight to the load and on some other occasions I have added the weight inside the cars and concealed it by painting it black. At one time I added steel nuts painted black. I also tried melted candle wax to both fill the voids and anchor the weights to the car.

A new idea for me came from a hybrid of all of these. In many cases coal for export would be unloaded at great lakes piers and the hoppers would be loaded with a bit of Iron Ore deposited over each truck for the return trip so during much of the journey the car could be loaded. Cars traveling on the rail roads would look empty because much of the volume of the car would be unused by the dense ore.

In order to duplicate this I thought a load could be done cheaply by placing the steel nut or pennies over the trucks, about 2 to 3 oz. total, covering them with wax, detailing the surface of the wax to look like iron ore, and then if the cars were hauling coal placing a removable load over them. This little trick would allow the cars to be weighted, have two different loads by only removing one, and by changing the color of the coal loads they could also represent limestone used as flux in the steel mills or for other purposes. Also if an empty was needed and the layout was close to eye level the iron ore could be ignored.

I will begin detailing cars in the future in this manner. I am also going to look into trying some things like plaster inside the cars to simulate the iron ore and add weight. Paul, thanks for your points in the discussion that made me think about this a bit more as it seemed to give me the push needed to further the iron ore idea to something that might be workable.

@ Rob - Great Info!

Rob,

You really outdid yourself on your reply this time. All this info is great! If I wasn't deep in the middle of layout construction I'd stop everything right now and go through my whole car fleet, which at this point is still manageable to do! Maybe I'll save that job for the summer months when I get to do little railroad jobs out on the porch instead of being cooped up in the basement like I am now in the long Minnesota winter. 

To clarify some things regarding weight though. I looked at the NMRA recommendations which says 1 oz plus 1/2oz for each inch of car length. Using that I end up with about 3-3.5oz for a 55 ton 2 bay hopper (which happen to be my favorite hopper), and around 4 oz for a 3 bay 70 ton hopper. If I understand you right, you'd have about 1 to 1 1/2 ozs of extra weight on top of that? The NMRA standards sheet seems to indicate additional weight past their recommendations doesn't really help anything. Seems with your experience you would disagree?

On that small string of cars I had on my video, I went back and check the bolster screws. Sure enough, some of them were loose. So I tightened them as you and Joe suggested above. Then I added weight to bring the cars up to NMRA standards. I do notice some improvements and no more wiggles. So this has been a great learning experience. Thanks!

Paul

If you are running trains that are shorter than mine it is not a real big deal. If you wish to back an 80 car cut through a yard throat or up a grade it is. As radius gets smaller and trains get longer the force that tries to pull them from the track increases.

This can be determined by hand if you put together a train over 50 cars and pull it with the 050 and then do the same with a 10 car train. The way to combat this is by increasing the weight in the cars, they track better, have inertia and are more resistant to being pulled from the track when going around curves.

I was told about the weight from a guy that advocated prototype weights for his cars and decided that they needed to be heavier. This happened while he and I were talking about various things in the hobby shop. As it turns out there are lots of guys that come in buy some stuff and then hang out and visit with others while there.

I tried it and it works. Also when you take a break from construction work on your great layout (I am so envious, I even like the track plan, and concept) you could sit down with some freight cars, your test track, a cradle, and a few tools and supplies and make short work of tuning your fleet. I use the scale, add weight, check height, and then check that the couplers rotate freely, have limited vertical play, the knuckles open and close, "air hose", aka trip pin is the right height and make sure the tip has a slight upward bend. The later tip allows the trip pin to ride over a crossing or street or actuating wire in the space between the rails that has become a bit high instead of snagging on it. I also lubricated my couplers with some of that powdered graphite that kadee made for that purpose, very little is used.

While looking at your track plan I discovered a way that would make this a rather pleasant task after the track and bench work and some of the wiring is in. If you wished to take a break you could set up at your main yard tune a car and put it on one of the yard tracks until you have a train of your staging track length and then run the train down to the staging yard. You then build another and as you work you begin to see progress and you also have a train of reliable rolling stock ready to test your next section of track work. I would save a few cars that have no increased weight till you are finished and mark them some how (piece of masking tape) till you get all your track done. The light and more sensitive cars will find defects in track that your heavily weighted cars will just ignore.

You will then have bullet proof cars and track and be the envy of all who visit your railroad.

You may also hear about increased load on your locomotives by having cars that are too heavy. You might also hear things like your engines won't be able to pull the train on the layout. Good quality locomotives that have been cleaned and lubricated will do just fine. I will quote some model railroader test results regarding the H-24-66 with sound and the H-16-44 with out sound made by Atlas. "The pull of the H-24-66 is equivalent to 60 free rolling cars on straight and level track, the pull of the H-16-44 is equivalent to 40 free rolling cars on straight and level track." The above quote is from memory and any errors are mine. Based on that the maximum pull would have been 160 cars on level and straight track. One might expect the added weight to have a negative effect on the train. I have pulled more than 160 cars up grades that in places exceeded 2% and while on the grade had the train going through many turn back curves at the ends of peninsulas, the curves totaled over 600 degrees, 3 of which were each 180 degrees with just those three engines and can run that train as long as I want. My next one will be 200 hopper cars as became the norm with three units on the Virginian in 1959. I might have to use three trainmasters though.

I sure hope you keep posting your construction photos and videos as I am really enjoying your layout. If I ever get up in your area I will give you a call and see if I can stop by for a visit. I would really like to see your layout and meet you as well as some of the other folks on here that I have visited with via the web.

@ Rob

Rob,

So your saying that with shorter trains the NMRA weight recommendations will do just fine, and there is no need to add additional weight, unless I want to run really long trains of say 50+ cars? I figure my longest trains will only be between 30-45 cars max on the main, and only about 10-12 cars will be pushed through the yard throat at any one time. 

They should be, but the

They should be, but the additional weight will make them work better particularly if you ever have to back up a train. I will not mention the brand of these particular cars but they were ready to run (said so right on the box) but that was not the case. Myself and a friend of mine bought some as they were of an unusual prototype that would appear on both of our railroads, (his is built mine is planned). This particular friend is known as our resident rivet counter (in a good way) and is an exceptional modeler having several articles in the modeling press and in some historical society publications as well. One day after I took the cars apart that I had bought and had them running on the club layout he stopped by and said to me Rob what did you do to make those cars run so well? I can't get them to run at all on my layout. The big things for those was truck tuner, new couplers, weight and they then ran rather well. The models looked good but needed lots of work to get the trucks and couplers to move well and to get the models to track well. Tom's layout does not normally run much over 20 cars in trains and many times less and is equipped with 28 inch minimum radius curves. It is very well built and functions well so the issue was the car not the railroad.

Bringing everything up to at least the standard will improve things a lot and going past it really helps. You may not need the extra weight but it will help every where you can get past it.

If you envision lots of empty coal hoppers and want reliable ops for trains in the sizes you listed I would recommend the Accurail hoppers for operation. Couplers and metal wheels, I to prefer the intermountain wheels as you do.

One individual I know would buy lead bird shot size 9 and pour it into the cavities in his cars and glue it in. He also put small amounts in the bottom of hopper cars so it represented an empty that just needed to be cleaned out or had some wear.

Hey , Paul

When you get time go over to my blog and look at some of the latest entries. One of our visitors for the open house was the guy that I mentioned previously regarding the additional weight and how he did it with bird shot. He was wanting to see one of my 160 car trains running around the layout but I did not have them ready. I was actually testing some cars with most of the weights removed some even less than nmra standards. When you asked about shorter trains I needed to find out. I put together a shorter train only 56 to 58 cars plus a caboose and removed the loose additional weight. I then began running it backward around the layout to check for reliability. Some cars were present day kits others were golden oldies that in many cases were built by others and reworked a wee bit by me. Some maybe more than a wee bit. Some still need more work to get them exactly right.

I was able to run the train backward for most of the time but still had the very occasional derailment on occasion. To me that is unacceptable. I also had some cars with no extra weight and they were completely empty. I will post a short video of the stopped train soon so you can see the various motley collection of rolling stock I used for the test. I will add a photo here as well. I have gone into detail with the formula he, Thomas S., uses to weight his cars on the blog and I am going to do so for mine as well.

This is a photo of the train that is not loaded with lots of extra weight that I decided to use for a test vehicle for your questions earlier.

@ Rob - Car Weight

Rob,

Thanks for the info. I did take a look at your club blog and found the weight formula you listed there very interesting. From your vast experience as well as the experience of your friend, it does seem like there's some benefit in weighting cars beyond the NMRA recommendations. Your trials in taking weight out of your cars and running a shorter train and ending up with some derailments seems to bear that out.

Now, I don't know that I really want to read all the data on my cars and make the calculations based on the formula, but I do like the idea of using the NMRA formula but starting out with a different base weight of 2.5 oz instead of the recommended 1 oz, then adding another another 1/2 oz per inch of car. 

As I mentioned earlier I've recently been doing some weight trials with a small string of hoppers on my  layout currently under construction. I've brought them up to NMRA standards and like what I've seen. Now I'll have to bring them up to "The Rob Standard" and see how things go.

Like you, I will have a lot of open hopper cars on my layout. I've been looking at various options to add weight. As an avid fisherman I thought maybe I could find something related to fishing that would help weight my railroad cars. I think I may have found something. It's 1/4" diameter lead tube weight that's used in salmon fishing. You get 5 pounds of tube for about $30. Here's a picture from the Cabela's website...

I thought I could cut small sections and put them inside the bottom of the hopper chutes, then paint them black so they wouldn't be seen. Alternately, I could cut small sections, flatten them out with a hammer, then glue them under the sloping hopper sides, or put them into the hopper body cavities much as your friend did with the bird shot. 

Paul that is an interesting

Paul that is an interesting product, although the cost seems high per car. If one needs to add 3 oz per car for example you can weight 26.6 cars, or about 1.13 per car. In comparison pennies at 10 cents to the oz. cost .30 cents to bring them up to weight. I would check to see what a 25lb bag of number 9 shot costs and compare the cost per car.

I did get tortured a bit by some guys in the club for having derailments, they wanted to take pictures for crying out loud!

"So you're saying that with

I agree with that. NMRA specs are a good place to start. The issue is not the amount of weight it's more the difference between your heaviest cars and your lightest cars. Anyone who's run N scale knows very light cars with tiny flanges  can run in very long trains, the lighter the train the less pulling force required so it's easier to pull the trains around the corners thus lessening their tendency to stringline. One can equalize car weight by adding lots of weight to the lightest cars or by not buying any very heavy cars. Most rolling stock falls somewhere in the middle and runs fine as long as the trucks and couplers are set up right. Adding extra weight to all cars to solve mechanical defects in a few cars is an expensive solution to a cheap problem......DaveB  

Paul check this out. Bass pro

Paul check this out.

Bass pro shops reloading supplies:

Number 9 chilled lead shot costs 54.99 per 25lb bag, there are approximately  570 pellets per oz. so it will be easy to pour into tight spots and secure with white glue. Your 5lbs for $30.00 seems high by comparison, 25 lbs of this lead fishing weight 150.00.

25lbs times 16 = 400 divided by three yields 133 freight cars at three oz per car. 54.99 divided by 133 comes to .41 cents per car if 3 ounces is needed to get to the more desirable weight. Still not as cheap as pennies as they are ten to the ounce, can be bought with out tax every where and will arrive at your local bank with no shipping charges. They are great for cars that are closed like box cars and they already come graduated in tenth of an ounce increments.

I am going to go buy about 3 bags of number nine shot to use in weighting flats, gons, and hopper cars. At 41 cents per car and small enough to easily conceal in things it should be great. I also believe it will be great for pouring into cavities in locomotives to increase weight. think of the inside of fan housings sand domes etc.

I recently added about 5 and 1/2 oz of weight to a 2-10-4 and greatly improved the tracking and pulling power of this locomotive, it still has the ability to slip so there is some safety involved if an excessive load is placed on it. I did not have the lead shot but used sheet lead that I hammered into various shapes to fit the spaces available, lots of work.

Special note regarding wax DON'T USE IT

Earlier in this thread I talked about using wax as a cheap means of adding weight to cars. Tried it out and was very dissatisfied with the results. Initially they were quite good and easy to use. The drawback seems to be after it was melted it has a much lower melting temperature and runs inside storage boxes and glues the cars to the foam protectors. I was able after a bit of effort to clean it from my cars but can say I would not recommend wax as a safe means for anything attached to a model railroad that can experience warm temperatures. The wax seemed like an ideal solution until some months after I used it and it got a bit warm. The wax was able to be removed with hot tap water. It seems that once it was melted something changed in it and it melted at much lower temperatures the second time around.

Paul you were asking about

Paul you were asking about car weight and why earlier. Here is a recent video that shows the benefits of heavier cars. This train is 105 cars long and has both a pusher and lead engine that were consisted together. I ended up shooting about 40 minutes of video over approximately four hours. The train was turned on and allowed to run over our club layout while I spent most of the time fooling with my camera and set up for various shots. The train went up and down hills just fine. Other than changing speed for a city shot I really did not have to do anything.

@ Rob

Ok Rob, that video is just way, way cool. But I have to tell you, at this point you're preaching to the choir. You've made me a convert on the advantages of extra weight, and I'm slowly converting my rolling stock to the heavier weight standard. 

As I watched the video though I was curious. I'll never run a train that long on my layout, but could you have put both engines on the head end of such a train and still pulled that many cars? Or would the couplers have pulled apart because of the weight involved, thus necessitating one of the engines in the helper position?

Oh, and by the way...I think you need more hopper cars! 

Hey , Paul

Actually it is easier to put the power on the front end and I have done that in my other video. I have pulled more than 170 of the heavy cars with all the power on the front end and no issues with Kadee couplers, other brands fail but not Kaydees. I do have screws holding all coupler boxes attached, on Athearn cars the center post is drilled and the cover attached with screws. Just thought you might like to see how well that worked. As I recall I thought you might be wanting to run helpers on your main line mountain road just for fun on occasion and now you know they will likely go through your helix just fine.

I have more hopper cars, just short on loads to fit them right now. I'll have to tell that to the guys.

The next long train will be a

The next long train will be a loaded coal train 200 cars three units pulling it all on the head end. I might have to add more units as the grades on our club layout are much stiffer than the ones faced on the Virginian. They are closer to the grades on the N&W and the N&W used 5 units to pull similar trains. That train will be sometime in the future. I have the cars just need to start making loads, when I start putting them into the yards on the club layout I believe I will start hearing about it. A couple of guys posted some links and pictures of a 175 car loaded coal train and three steam engines, I might need to do one of those with the units I have, an AG on the rear and the front with a 2-10-4 in front of the lead AG. I think it might be just enough to duplicate another real train.

Loads

Rob,

Do the loads you make for your hoppers have different coal sizes, or are they all the same? I've been thinking about future hopper loads for this layout I'm constructing. I'd like to model 3 different grades, something like slack coal, nut coal, and lump coal. I know that might complicate loading and unloading the hoppers manually somewhat, but I think the increased opportunities for switching at the mines and the yard will help expand the operational potential of the layout, provide some additional variety to the hopper fleet, as well as enhancing the layouts prototype feel, which might be important since I'm freelancing a fictitious portion of the N&W Pokey District.