Pictures of My First Trial

Here's my bucket of #9 lead shot. I found out using a Sharpie cap works really nice for pouring the shot into holes on the under frame of the car. 

To begin with I mixed shot with white glue in a small dixie cup. I stirred it up so the shot was all covered with glue, then placed the shot with a modeling knife into holes on the under frame.

I thought filling all the holes would bring me close to my target weight of 1 oz/inch. Wrong! For this car I needed a total weight of 6 ozs and wasn't even close yet. I tried to think of other places to put weight and have heard of people wrapping lead/solder around the wheel axles, but that didn't appeal to me.

So I flipped the car over and started to add lead inside the hopper. Here's how much lead I had to add to get to my target weight of 6 ozs for this particular car.

Since I was still in trial stage I didn't add glue here yet. That was partly because I didn't really like the look of what I was seeing. What to do though? I finally decided a false floor might do the trick. So I cut some pieces of cardboard out and colored them with a black Sharpie to place above the shot.

I realize this is far from a perfect solution. Maybe using actual styrene cut to a better fit, and getting the color of the false floor a little closer to the actual car color would help. But in my opinion this is a lot better than seeing the shot.

True you don't see the hopper doors now in this "empty". But I feel this might be a good trade off, given the benefits over-weighting seems to have in terms of realistic and reliable operation. I have a feeling when operators (that would be mainly me at this point) are busy switching in the yard or out on the line, they might not even notice the false floor. 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and advice!

Sheet lead...

....is what I used for open hoppers. I cut out paper templates the same shape as the slope sheets and used these to cut the sheet lead (flashing) which was painted and weathered to match the interior of the car. It is much less noticeable than what you have. I still have lead shot in the underside as you have done.

Tungsten

Using lead or tungsten putty in the underside cavities will give you more weight since the putty has no airspace. I wonder if you can belt the lead shot and pur it into the underside openings? Or perhaps make a mold of the underside to form it into solid, fitted weights?

If you can afford it, tungsten is also far heavier per cubic inch:
Lead - 708 pounds per cubic foot.
Tungsten - 1224 pounds per cubic foot.

As suggested by Graeme, sheet material on the sloped surfaces of the hopper will be more ascetically pleasing.

with hoppers and flat cars

with hoppers and flat cars you should consider an "empty weight" also. I am sure that you have drop in loads or are you live loading your hoppers. If your dropping in loads then why not add the balance of the weight to the bottom of the plastic insert?

Replies

Thanks for the comments guys. I liked Bills idea about the tungsten putty, but at $9+ per ounce even at Walmart, I don't think my budget will handle that very well. 

Eventually I will have drop in loads for each hopper, but would like to keep them as light as possible so they are easily picked up with a magnet. I also want the majority of the weight in the hopper so I keep the benefits of over-weighting whether the hopper is a "load" or "empty".

So it looks like I'm kind of leaning in the sheet lead direction as Graeme suggested. I'm glad Accurail puts out fairly inexpensive cars, because after adding Kadee couplers, Intermountain wheels, and now all the lead for over-weighting, the price per car is really starting to add up!

Why not try it out before going permanent?

If I were you, I'd pour lead shot into the open hopper until it reaches your desired weight.  Don't glue it.  I'd do a bunch of cars and try operating them.  Over-weighting might or might not work well on your railroad, depending on your grades and motive power.  Having a few cars overweight won't tell you much, a whole train or two of them will let you see how it will work.  Maybe an ounce per inch is too much or not enough.  You get the drift.

Bob Bartizek

Lebanon, OH

Another alternative

Is over at Adair Shops ( http://www.adairshops.com)  Howard makes sheets that replace the ones that come with the cars and are heavier.  Little paint on them and there you go.

"Why not try it out before

   and try operating without the extra weight for a while to see if it's really necessary? Like most fads we'll probably look back on extra heavy cars and wonder what we were thinking :> )   Until a layout is finished and one is bored I see no reason to spend time and money on things that don't move the layout more towards a more finished state of appearance. The "good enough" theory of layout construction applies to all aspects of the hobby and not just to rolling stock and scenery details.........DaveB 

Replies

Bob - timely advice. I am in fact taking your suggestion and trying some trains out on my 2% grades to see what happens.

James - thanks for the link. Not sure I want to spend and extra $5+ bucks per hopper car, but I appreciate the input.

Dave -

I resonate with your comment. When I purchased the lead shot my first thought was "Do I really want to spend this money when I could be using it to buy more track and cork roadbed?" But I had a little extra money to play with, so I took the plunge. If nothing else, I'd like to at least bring my cars up to the NMRA recommended practice for weight.

I do have to admit though I am questioning my desire to overweight my cars. I'm very particular about my track work, and on my last layout I had no problems running a 40 car train backwards with no weight added other than what came with the car kits. So maybe the extra weight isn't really needed as you say. 

Accurail hopper weights

I use Accurail hopper weights, paint them black or oxide and glue them inside the car. At $1.50/car it's a pretty cheap solution and looks good.

It's the physics

Needed? The extra weight is not likely needed, beyond the recommended weight, for improved performance as far as derailments are concerned, but that is not the main reason to over-weight your rolling stock.

You will find that the handling characteristics of the fleet are dramatically different with the heavier cars. For many this creates a more realistic look and feel to operation. If that sense of inertia and mass is not the goal, then there is not a lot of reason to go down this road.

A side benefit of heavy cars is that they are harder to derail, but over weight cars in no way lets anyone off the hook where trackwork quality is concerned.

Paul, have you considered

Paul, have you considered putting the weight behind the slope sheet on the Accurail cars? It should be removable with some care and by tilting your cars so the end slope sheet is level you should be able to add lead where the steel weight is located on the cars, even a layer of shot over the steel weight then the plastic slope sheet should hide the shot fairly well. On unbuilt cars it should be easier to add weight in this manner.

In looking at your car a triple hopper what weight did you get before adding any weight to the car? You can also add weight to the inside of the center sill as well.

Be careful with

lead shot and PVA glue - there have been documented instances of the PVA-glued lead shot swelling after some time to the extent that it split soldered joints on brass stock (especially where it had been used to weight up side tanks on locomotives).  The results have been catastrophic structurally where the lead shot and the PVA have been fully enclosed. Others may have more experience with non-brass rolling stock and whether swelling occurs with non-brass rolling stock.

I haven't seen any definitive explanation of what the reaction is that causes the swelling. You may need to use a different to avoid this potential problem if you are using lead shot for additional weight.   

"When I purchased the lead

I have two bags of lead shot I bought at a garage sale over 30 years ago and they are still about half full after adding weight to the lightweight cars that have passed over my work bench since then. If you plan to be in the hobby for many years you'll be glad you have the lead when you need it. If you don't weight all your cars to a heavier standard the weight will just last longer .  I view extra weight the same way I do things like Sergeant couplers or rubber magnetic airhoses or battery power; I can always add them later if I run out of more productive things to do. Since I'm still trying to get up motivation to finish my backdrop and benchwork the side issues seem like a mis-direction right now  :> ) ..DaveB

lead weight

how about using automotive stick-on weights they sell them on e-bay pretty cheap if you buy them as a lot or a brick of them that's what i use with a electronic scale.

Lead Sheet Update....

...I forgot to mention that I also replace the supplied weight that goes under the slope sheets on cars like Athearn with lead too. the lead there is much heavier than the supplied steel.

As for the comment on the Lead/PVA mix problems I have seen that too. I only use contact cement. 

Automotive stick-on weights

Weighting the Fleet

I've started to add extra weight to my hopper car fleet. I liked the idea of using lead sheet some suggested, but since I had already bought the #9 shot I decided to go ahead with that instead.

I'm weighting the cars 1 oz/inch between the couplers. After determining the correct amount of lead needed, I filled the undercarriage with as much lead as possible and secured it with white glue.

Then I tipped the car, and added half of the remaining lead to one of the sloped sides and secured that with white glue. Once the glue dried I did the other end. 

Once the glue dried I cut new slope sheets from .020" styrene to cover the lead shot.

I took the slope sheets out, spray painted them flat black, and reinserted them into the cars. 

Not perfect I know, but since I'm not a rivet counter, for my tastes I thought they turned out good enough. 

Another source for tungsten

If Walmart charges $9 an ounce for tungsten putty you might want to check this out.  The cheapest form of tungsten they sell goes for $2.65 an ounce:  http://www.maximum-velocity.com/pinewood_derby_weight.htm

Paul that looks really good.

Paul that looks really good. I might just take a page from your book!

get the lead...

get the lead out! In!

Nice work Paul!

Mike M. Make it easy for me... Which one is the cheap one?

Pennies are ten to the ounce,

Pennies are ten to the ounce, lead shot is even cheaper, why would one want to spend $2.65 per ounce to add weight to freight cars?

In many cases 3oz per car is what might be needed, in a 100 car train it is 300 oz of added weight so you are looking at 30.00 for the train. With tungsten it is now 795.00 to weight the train.

Tungsten

I'm only interested in tungsten for squeezing a little more weight into locomotives. For difficult to weight cars, I'd look at lead sheet or putty personally. Paul gets extra points for using what he had on hand creatively. 

The density of lead is 0.410

Now there is a factoid or fun fact if you will that I was not aware of. It seems that the tungsten paste might have merit after all. Although I wonder if it is in a pure state. I would look carefully to see what other items were added to the material as additives could change the density significantly. Big changes in the material could surely change the density.

As Bill mentioned adding weight in locomotives would be in my mind worth much more in terms of cost than equipping a long train of freight cars. For example the hundred car train might only need 2 diesel locomotives or 2 steam locomotives to run it over the road. If one were able to increase the pulling power by 10 or 20 percent in a locomotive surely one would decide an investment of 10 to 15 dollars is worth while.