MT Heavyweight Pass. Car Derailments

[randgust]

Well I ordered a set of Lemo's steps after another frustrating SW search, sure glad that link was put up here.   One of those wonderful deals where if you don't log in via Shapeways, when you do log in it blows the shopping cart you saved, and when you do log in via SW to complete the order then you can't find the part even when you know the description!     Not you Lemo, not you.   Every time I try to search for anything on SW I curse their system.  The results you get back are just inexplicable.   I'm a seller as well and even finding my own stuff is an exercise.

I'd converted over one Rivarossi the 'hard way' and tested that again last night with a variety of MT cars.  No doubt about it, moving all cars over to body mounts that interface with MT's is the fix.   I have a Riv full baggage and the combine, I''m leaving the full baggage and the front end of the combine truck mounts for now.

Because I'm really cheap, too, I experimented with leaving in the original Rivarossi trucks and simply putting MT wheels in them, then putting Unimates in place of the original Rapidos as this is sort of a unit train anyway.   That appears to work, even if you hack off the original boxes and body-mount a 1015 later.  They roll just fine.     

[trainforfun]

This thread made me realize I have never really run my 7 passenger cars train by MT , that is always parked in the yard waiting for a call I guess .
My layout have radii over 15" but I have a couple of too close reverse curves .
The MT cars are not all the same lenght , I have a short RPO or mail car right at the beginning of the train .

At first it went well but soon derailed ....

A close look at the couplers showed me they were body mount ( as you all know ) but the couplers are not scewed in but eitheir retained by a small pin similar to pins that hold the trucks to the car , and the couplers are tight without any play left to right except for the couplers mechanism .
I removed one and saw that the hole in the coupler was a tight fit with the pin . At first I tried to fix the coupler with a regular MT screw but it did not fixed the derailing problem . I then tried to cautiously enlarge the hole in the coupler ( without exploding the coupler !! ) and reinstall the screw , not to thight to leave a little bit of play  .
Voilà !!!! no more derailing !
I modified all the others couplers but re-installed the pin instead of MT screws ( I didn't have enough in stock ) .
I did explode only 1 coupler in the process , that I rebuilt .

Not expensive and same close look .
 

[mmagliaro]

So by enlarging that hole, you now allow the whole coupler box to pivot?  I'm trying to picture what you did.

[Lemosteam]

So by enlarging that hole, you now allow the whole coupler box to pivot?  I'm trying to picture what you did.

Yes Max, as I explained earlier that is what is supposed to happen.  In reality you have a six point articulated joint from each truck bolster pin center to the center, where and two coupler box pivots are, and two coupler within the box pivots each trying to compensate for the car body overhang swing.

[Gozer the Gozerian]

   Given the thread I set up an 11" radius track (atlas snap) and pulled our cars out of the box with no problems.  The Milwaukee is a Fox Valley car and when joining our cars to a competitors I found it best sometimes to use a 1016 either on our car or theirs.  Fox Valley and Rapido have their couplers mounted further under the diaphragm than ours is making it difficult to function on an 11"  12" and above I didn't have any problems.   Kato did ok, but their knuckles are smaller and less flexible even being truck mounted.  I replaced theirs with our 1129/28 and they ran fine on that test layout.  We have a very large layout in the front office everything is tested on for something close to a real world situation and never had issues.  I've gotten some complaints and when pressed found out that they were running these cars on 9 3/4 radius' as well as "S" curves...none of which offers fool proof operations.

Hope this helps clear us some of the concernes here.   

Joe

  https://www.facebook.com/joe.damato.18/videos/2824922314199766/

[trainforfun]

So by enlarging that hole, you now allow the whole coupler box to pivot?  I'm trying to picture what you did.

Exactly !

[SecretWeapon]

With the high price of these cars, we shouldn't have to modify anything! I also had problems with the new well cars. They told me I had to adjust something. I have hand problems. I can't do it. I have to ask friends to do. I shouldn't have to. If they know the truck mounted couplers, that they made the standard, won't work with body mounted couplers, why wouldn't they fix the problem before releasing them? Why leave it up to the modeler who's forks out $25-40 a car? IMHO, they're listening to the people who put the cars in a case & not the people who run trains. I want them to be bullet proof, as they've been in the past  &  not be embarrassed by derailments in front of other modelers. I love MTL cars. I have over 2,000 of them. But I'm not thrilled with whoever is trying to change their proving ways of success.

[nickelplate759]

I haven't had to modify anything on these cars.  That said, it really does depend on your track, and, as with any long car with body-mounted couplers, what you couple them to.   Coupled to each other they've been just fine for me, with no tinkering.

[trainforfun]

I haven't had to modify anything on these cars.  That said, it really does depend on your track, and, as with any long car with body-mounted couplers, what you couple them to.   Coupled to each other they've been just fine for me, with no tinkering.

I had problem with them but it was easily corrected at no extra charge not having to buy a different coupler .
I use my 7 cars all together not mixed with another brand of car .
The main problem were a couple of "s" curves but even on a continuous 18" radius a car was sometimes pushed outside .
It doesn't happen anymore with my correction .

[randgust]

IMHO, they're listening to the people who put the cars in a case & not the people who run trains. I want them to be bullet proof, as they've been in the past .

Mike, I know what you mean.  I've been using truck-mounts since the beginning of time here, and unlike a lot of people, seem to have never really had an issue with backing trains around, probably because I'm very fussy on my trackwork and cutting in my switchpoints.  And as I use magnetic uncoupling, truck mounts keep the coupler vertically and horizontally centered much better than body mounts unless you have acres of space and no curves.

Now I'm buying cars with body mounts, mostly when they don't hit my local switching pool, and it's OK.  I've only had one car that was so screwed up in design that I just sold it as unfixable, the Atlas 89' TTX flat.   MT's design on piggyback flats is just so good, that's my definition of bulletproof there.  I really hope they don't 'fix' that, it's the best design out there.

But standard passenger cars are another animal. It's those stupid steps, and the bolster position.   Rivarossi chose to simply ignore the steps, which is ugly.  MT chose to do them, and that pretty much seals your fate with body mounts, there's nowhere for anything to swing unless you do a thing like Bachmann did on the Doodlebug and invent a compound arm to pivot the box.   As far as for the MT's, they work pretty good as long as they are segregated with each other, but I've had to modify all my Rivarossi's to get along with them.  It's kind of a no-win situation for MT, if there were an easy answer I think they would have done it.   I have admired them for sometimes retreating from a bad design, like the low-profiles, when it's obvious that some changes just don't work all that well. 

It's a concession to the pressure to go all body-mount in the scale, and I'm not entirely on board with it, mostly due to the alignment on curves for coupling and uncoupling.  I have done an extensive program of lowering body shells.   If there's two things that irritate me about 'modern' N, it's the concessions in mechanisms that have been made in DCC and sound that greatly compromise tractive effort, and the all-or-nothing drive to go to body-mounts and swizzle sticks as an uncoupling method.   One of the things that really surprised me when I started in N back in '72 was that it worked way better than HO, where Athearn body-mounts, X2F couplers, and RP25 flanges were causing an unending stream of derailments.  And delay uncoupling in N worked better than it did in HO, too.  My HO friends still have more of those than I do, by far.  No thanks.   Unless I run a switch, derailments are very, very rare on my railroad, and I'd like to keep it that way, and I don't poke my trains with sticks, either.

[peteski]

But standard passenger cars are another animal. It's those stupid steps, and the bolster position.   Rivarossi chose to simply ignore the steps, which is ugly.  MT chose to do them, and that pretty much seals your fate with body mounts, there's nowhere for anything to swing unless you do a thing like Bachmann did on the Doodlebug and invent a compound arm to pivot the box.   

Not just Bachmann,  Nowadays the "compound coupler mounting arm" as you call it, is pretty much universally used on European prototype models (and has been for quite some time). Rapido couplers of course. Same method is used for tender drawbars on steam locos (for close coupling).

Kato uses it on some of their passenger sets (Kinematic couplers). FVM also used this coupler mounting method (with MTL couplers) on their Hiawatha passenger set.  While not quite prototypically accurate, this coupler mounting method allows for coupler centering, close coupling, and is still compatible with tight radius curves.  But it seems that the body-mount Nazis are winning the battle when it comes to U.S. prototype trains as more and more manufacturers are bowing to their pressure. 

Unless I run a switch, derailments are very, very rare on my railroad, and I'd like to keep it that way, and I don't poke my trains with sticks, either.

You are one of the few (users of hands-free magnetic delayed uncoupling).  Be proud!  Kadee brothers woudl applaud you.  And I'm not saying this in jest.

[mmagliaro]

Ultimately, economics drives everything, and I don't see how it's in a manufacturer's economic interest to go either way (body mount or truck mount).    If they had to start from scratch making tooling for truck-mounted couplers, I could definitely see them saying, "forget this", and just putting body-mountable couplers on everything.  But that isn't the case.  Trucks with mounted couplers have been around for decades.

So what is the impetus?   Is it really just some prototype fanatics calling up manufacturers and asking for body mounts?  That makes no sense to me.  Manufacturers want to sell to the largest market, not just the esoteric Railwire freaks (and I include myself in that group).

I really think they are doing it because it just plain looks a lot better.  Truck-mounted couplers make the rolling stock look more like a toy.  Operationally, my experience is 180 degrees opposed to Randy's.  I can push strings of cars around my layout with ease when they are all body-mounts.  If I try it with truck mounts, it's hit and miss.  It depends on how many cars, how fast I dare push them, etc. 

Coupling them on curves can be nuisance, ands does require a poker to align the couplers will sliding the cars together.    But then, the real railroads have this same problem.  You can do a web search for discussion of this topic.  They avoid trying to couple on curves for the same reasons we avoid it in N Scale. 

Haven't we all been through these growing pains many times with code 55 track and lower profile wheels, for example?  Remember the rage that erupted because the Atlas code 55 wouldn't tolerate a lot of existing flanges?  I myself used ME code 55 at first because of the added clearance and because I didn't want to cut down all my locomotive flanges. 
But didn't the smaller rail gauge and flanges end up making N Scale look far better in the long run?  Didn't that help it stop screaming, "I AM NOT HO OR O SCALE!" in photos?

I don't think it's a "pressure" to go all-body-mount so much as it's a natural progression toward more and more realistic looking trains, requiring more and more realistic curves and grades.

[randgust]

If you go far enough back in time, you'll see that virtually every MT car frame had dimples on the cast underframe to easily convert to body mounts.  Design feature to placate that group, and a good one, although you're drilling holes.   I'd have to really search some of my newer cars to check.   I don't get annoyed with the appearance of truck mounts except on things like the covered hoppers, coal cars, etc., where there's nothing in there but air, should be a frame in there, at least cosmetic.

I've probably got enough equipment now that I'm not sure I care that much, car purchases now are limited to retiring cars with better-looking and better running ones.   But there really are two N scales, the ones that don't have space to run HO so it's either N or nothing (and I'm in that group) or N scale that has a full basement or room available and can afford to go to HO-size curves and do N instead.      I do think that things like the 'medium' flange were an excellent compromise, they seem to work OK in my world so far and on Atlas C55 as well.    Personally, I know I push the envelope running the train lengths I do on a layout only 5'6 x 8, it's tested the limits of tractive effort, RDA coupler design, stringlining on curves, etc.  That's not entirely representative of the scale either, but it's worked well for decades, it's literally the bumblebee that can't possibly fly, but it does, rather well, thank you.   I'm glad as much of the 'new stuff' works as well as it does, the number of total fails is fairly small.   

And if you think I'm a lone wolf on MT delayed-magnetics, I had an entire 'hands off' operation with Rapido couplers until the MT couplers arrived, with a combination of Trix and B&R electromagnetic ramps.  When wrongly positioned, they had the unique ability to launch a car vertically off the rails, and I still got that to work!  In comparison, converting everything to MT's and delay magnetics was a piece of cake.   Many of you have seen the Hickory Valley logging module, I hand-made brass uncouipling ramps (manually lifted) for Rapidos on that one, and traces of the linkage and tubing system are still visible in a couple spots.  You really have to be a glutton for punishment to make that stuff work.  And I can make MT's work on that with 8" curves and delay uncoupling.  No body mounts there though except on the 25' log cars!

[CRL]

I am fairly ambivalent about body mount couplers. Truck mounted couplers don’t bother me at all and I’ve not had any problems backing a string of cars with truck mounted couplers, but that’s probably because I’m very careful with my track work. I can see where mixing truck mounted and body mounted could present issues if backing through sharp curves or a “S” curve crossover.

One method to minimize these issues is to use the broadest curves possible on visible track. You can use sharper curves on non-visible track since you won’t typically be backing up in hidden trackage. Spiral easements will also alleviate the issues. I also avoid cars longer than 60 scale feet.

[Frisco Larry]

I just bought some of the Shapeway steps.  Can anyone tell me how to attach the steps to the car?  They don't fit my Rivarossi  cars, either way.  And they don't come with any instructions.