The weight chapter was tricky

The car weighting chapter was tricky and is likely to be controversial.

However, it's 18 pages (almost one fifth of the book) and it covers not only all the viewpoints on car weighting and why you might want to choose one over the other, but it also covers a lot of different methods on how to do car weighting.

Included is this helpful car weighing comparison of all the methods covered:

Great news

Great news Joe. I am really looking forward to it, especially if you cover how to add weights to cars that can be tricky. Also, how to disguise weights in empty cars like lightweight flatcars or open top hoppers and gondolas.

Tim G.

Nothing like model

Nothing like model railroading controversy!

Lead sheet

The secret is lead sheet, I believe. First step is to replace any steel weights with lead sheet because it weighs 40% more than steel.

On hoppers and gondolas, you can put in false bottoms. If the false bottom needs rivets, these days you can add rivet decals! Once the false bottom is painted and weathered, you'll never see it.

On flat cars, one trick if you can remove the top boards is to replace them with scribed lead sheet. You can get lead sheet down to 1/64" thick, so just pick the appropriate thickness of lead sheet.

The other trick is to put lead sheet, built up in layers, underneath the car. If necessary, remove the underframe bracing and just make it solid layers of lead sheet.

Lead is the best because it has the greatest density of all the materials available for easily adding weight.

In the book, I also talk about methods to determine a weight that's appropriate for the car based on how well it performs in its unmodified state. The La Mesa club has shown how weight can be reduced on better performing cars. This assumes the extra weight is added to help more marginal cars perform better. If the car already performs better, you can reduce the weight somewhat.

The book goes over all the thinking needed to pick a weighting standard and it also talks about strategies for lightening certain cars. The lightening strategies apply both to those who prefer to weight cars below the NMRA standard and for those who want to overweight cars.

The NMRA standard, for example, is NOT linear. It makes longer cars lighter per inch of length than shorter cars. This can be helpful if you're into overweighting. This, plus being able to reduce the needed weight in cars that perform better can also help when dealing with open top cars.

It's all discussed and illustrated in the book!

Hex Nuts

For closed cars (box, reefer, baggage) in HO, how about common 5/8" steel hex nuts from the hardware store or home center? They cost as little as 30 cents each when bought in bags of 10 or more. Set them on the car floor or on the existing flat weight, add a dollop of canopy glue, done. Their interior threads "grab" the glue.

Steel hex nuts

Steel works inside closed-top cars, but because it's attracted to magnets, it doesn't work as well anywhere else.

A 5/8" steel hex nut weighs about 1.5 oz, so that's not a very incremental weighting product when you only need to add a fraction of an ounce. Plus that's about 20 cents per ounce, which is double the cost of pennies and 33% more expensive than the more economical 1/4 oz steel weights I recommend.

Plus the 1/4 oz steel weights allow a lot more incremental addition of small bits of weight. And they come with their own double-stick tape, so applying them to a car inside takes but a few seconds.

All-in-all, there are less expensive and more convenient products for adding weight to a car than steel hex nuts. And if you want economical non-magnetic weighting materials, it's hard to beat pennies and heavy-duty double-stick tape.

Tungsten is available in a variety of forms, not just powder

You might take a look at those outlets offering weights for pinewood derby cars.  One of the sites I've found which seems to have the greatest variety of forms is http://www.maximum-velocity.com/pinewood_derby_weight.htm#tungsten  None of it is particularly cheap but it is available in slugs of varying sizes and shapes, as putty, as pellets and as small discs (the latter two perhaps suitable for embedding in epoxy or some other glue).  As it says in the website tungsten is 1.7 times denser than lead so it may prove helpful to anyone taking lead out of something to make space available (e.g. remotoring a locomotive).

I just recently started to go

I just recently started to go through all my cars and am using #9 lead shot. I also have a sheet of 1/16" thick lead, but prefer the shot. For my standard I am using 1oz plus 5/8oz per inch. It puts a 40' box at an advised weight of 4.4oz which in my world works out fairly well. The NMRA weight would be 3.75oz. My max train length is 18 cars (of varied length). so I find that my standard 2 engine consist 2 cars per powered axle)are really having to work to pull the train and brings up the need for helper more so than just sticking another powered unit on the train because it looks good. my other factor on power is east bound (downhill and flat running) can get away with 2 powered units. West bound, they starts flat then climb will require a third unit to be added. The other thing that I don't hear so much on modelling sites is train handling! with more weight behind the engines you hear and feel the slack action as a train stretches out. Make sure you have Kadees installed on em!

Other forms of tungsten

Weight distribution

Hi Joe

Does your chapter deal with weight distribution?  For closed cars, I've always tried to place my pennies right over the two truck bolsters.  If the car is extremely light, I'll make a third stack in the center of the car, rather than stacking the pennies too high. 

However, one convenient place to put weight in a hopper car is in the load (I'm okay with the empty cars being lighter, it just 'feels right').  I recently added bolts caulked to the inside of my Ortner loads - that works great for lifting them out with a magnet - but it puts the bolt mass high in the car.  Is there any weight to the theory (sorry...) that putting the weight high in the car is counterproductive as it makes the car tip-prone?  When I think about it, the car has to lean pretty far for a weight on the centerline to actually start to contribute to a lean, but maybe I'm not thinking about it right?

Blair

Weight distribution

Joe I hope the book series is

Joe I hope the book series is ready soon. I am really looking forward to it.

On another front I read several posts where someone claims to need two locomotives to pull a twenty car train with cars weighted above the NMRA standard. This is not making any sense to me. I can pull trains of 100 cars easily up a 2% grade with two diesel units. The cars are heavier than the NMRA standard by typically between one to two ounces. For the life of me I do not see what the differences could be between our respective trains to account for this. Anyone have any ideas? I know there is not much basis here for anything but speculation but I would love to here the speculation on what could be so different.

The locomotives in question were rated based on MRs test data to pull 60 free rolling cars on straight and level track each, I tested them at better than 80 individually up a curving grade of 2 percent. I do not recall at this time how much over 80 they were, but again quite a difference.

The only thing I have done to the locomotives is clean and lubricate them and program them on decoder pro. They have been in service for several years and I have not noticed a change in performance over time.

Brand of cars?

That might be it Joe. I tune

That might be it Joe.

I tune all my trucks and wheels so they are very free rolling. I do use lots of different wheels and truck combinations and the consists are typically what ever one can find at a train show or hobby shop, but they are all very free rolling. I just did not think the difference could be just that. If I need to replace a set of trucks I use accurail trucks and intermountain metal wheels. Now just for grins what would your thoughts be on code 88 wheels vs code 100 with regard to rolling resistance, do you think that the narrower tread could produce less resistance as well? I run both but often wondered about that.

N Scale Mass

Joe,

Are you tips and tricks going to be applicable to N scale rolling stock as well?

I know that some things will be applicable but due to things like the different construction methods of the rolling stock (ie. access to the inside of the car) and truck mounted couplers, how will those be taken into account?

Thanks in advance.

Dave

Yes ...

Yes, pennies should fit inside N scale cars and each penny is 1/10th of an ounce. Same with the lead and steel weights. The lead sheet can be cut to any size needed, and the tungsten powder putty mix can be applied to N scale car undersides as well.

I also provide info on other scale weight standards including Z scale (which is not in the NMRA RP20.1 weighting guideline).

Finally, I adapt the La Mesa HO downweighting-based-on-performance guidelines from just HO to G-Z.

So the short answer is yes, I believe almost everything I cover applies to N scale as well. I'm careful to try and not forget the other scales in these books.

Is the sneak preview to be made available to those who have

already purchased?  Been a while and I don't recall how to get my preview copy.

Yep

Yep, you should have gotten an email with links. If you didn't, PM me using my name link above.

"Proportional" weighting

Has any consideration been given to "proportional" weighting?  ("Proportional" seems better than "proto"). 

Whatever descriptive term is used, it means weighting cars and locomotives so that they pull tonnage in proportion to what the prototypes pulled in the real world.  Using the referenced La Mesa standards, a first generation B-B diesel will pull a little over 2 cars per axle.  That fits in nicely with what Signor's book on Tehachapi shows for the tonnage ratings of F units pulling loaded reefers going up the eastward ruling grade.

Note that the layout parameters -- ruling grades and possibly curve radii -- also have to be factored in.  One of the neat things is that such weighting requires actual working helpers for some trains.

I may cover that in the locomotives volume

I may cover this in the locomotives volume. I used a simplistic version of this on my Siskiyou Line 1, with first generation units having a lower car pulling capacity than second Gen units, with different values for on the level and on a grade. Roseburg yard would use these values to assign power to the trains leaving Roseburg. On the level applied to any locals, and on a grade applied to through trains over Rice Hill.

Seems like a natural topic for the locos volume, although I doubt I can cover it definitively since it would require a lot of testing scenarios to zero in on something really definitive. But I can broach the subject and discuss how to do some testing to arrive at something like I did on SL1 for your own layout.

Interesting concepts about

Interesting concepts about trying to capture the power of the prototype in our scale models. I had been doing the same thing in a manner of speaking. I will refer to a few coal carriers I have looked at. The C&O ordered locomotives to pull 160 car coal trains from Kentucky to the great lakes traveling through Ohio. These locomotives were powerful and fairly fast as well as being able to make the run with two water stops and one stop half way for coal and water. There were two types of locomotives assigned to this service the 2-10-4 and the 2-6-6-6.

The N&W also used super power to pull long heavy trains and augmented the 2-6-6-4s with 2-8-8-2s when needed for grades. The N&W also used additional water cars so the engines could eliminate a water stop on the run.

The Virginian also ran long heavy coal trains but because of its superior design was able to pull trains of up to 200 cars with 3 diesel units. When compared with the same train for the N&W the N&W needed 5 units to do the job.

Now you see my interest in long trains and rather small by comparison amounts of motive power. I suspect I will not be able to duplicate the power of the massive steam locomotives with my models, but I seem to be hitting the mark or very close to it with some of the diesels.

Now by comparison the B&O would need more power in many locations and shorter trains because of steeper grades and tighter curves involved. It always seemed a bit strange how some lines could move so much with less than other lines.

In the mountainous areas of the C&O for example typically 100 car coal trains would be positioned between a pair of 2-6-6-6s, in some places on the B&O a pair of big articulated locomotives would be moving 60 cars, quite a difference in tonnage for the crews and fuel used.

I have duplicated the 100 car train in the mountains with a 2-6-6-6 at each end but doubt I will be able to achieve the 160 car train or 140 car trains  behind a single 2-6-6-6 on the C&O or Virginian.