Train Line stainless steel ball bearing wheels

Note, this page under construction, more information and pictures to follow

Overview

This page actually started from the need to reduce the rolling friction on the new for 2020 USAT heavyweight passenger cars. They have power pickup done the same way as their modern streamliners, so I was surprised when I had trouble pulling a train, and even more surprised when they string-lined on part of the layout where the streamliners are fine.

Power pickup is by brushes on the back sides of the wheels. Uh oh, while the streamliners have a very smooth, shiny, perfectly plated wheel, the heavyweight wheels are blackened. Huge difference in friction.

So what to do? My friend Dave Stubbs and I were looking at ideas, and we thought that getting ball bearing wheelsets might be the ticket. But whose to buy? Aristo is gone, and were not really great, AMS are hard to find, and not too great, LGB usually have a big toylike plastic hub.

Train-Li sells the Train Line 45 stainless steel wheelsets. Since I want to eliminate the brushes, I also don't want to be cleaning wheels, so stainless makes sense.

Measurements:

• back to back 1.062 to 1.064, using 1.063 for calculations.
• flange thickness is 0.0865
• wheel diameter at fillet 1.22"
• flange depth 0.162
• axle tip diameter 0.115
• axle length 2.75" (with shortened center tube)
• tread width 0.162" approx

Construction:

The units are 2 half axle assemblies, pushed into a plastic tube. There is some type of glue applied to hold them together, and the power pickup is just squeezing the fine wire between the axle stub and the tube.Not great

The ball bearings themselves are very smooth, but a bit more play in them than I would like, but probably one of the best made currently.

The wheels are machined nicely, nice finish

Observations and plans:

So I am a big proponent of back to back spacing on wheelsets. The back to back is what controls the alignment of a wheelset through the frog of a switch, where most derailments occur. So the back to back of 1.062 to 1.064 is way off.

My target is 1.575, and using 1.063 as the nominal, I need to narrow the back to back by 0.055.

This might have a negative effect on gauge, but I will try them out.

Not thrilled with the glued in place and the wire just pressed against the stub, but this should be a low current situation.

I already pulled one apart, and milled the center tube by 0.055" and then reassembled and very close to 1.575"

USAT Heavyweights

Overview:

These have been advertised for several years, I received mine in late March 2020. I ordered the full set of 10 cars

 They came packed 2 to a box, drop shipped from Charles Ro (thanks to RLD, that means they made only one trip instead of 2)

When unboxing:

1. open both ends to push out
2. open the foam clamshell and lift the car out
3. lay car on it's side and slide the plastic wrap off, being careful not to catch it on the underbody detail
4. remove the packing around the truck
5. A tip from Paul Burch when he unpacked his diner and combine, there is a small package (read: easy to overlook) with stirrups that can be added to the car. It's clear they could interfere with the truck swiveling on tighter curves. The diner has one supplied and the combine has 2. They are packed in a recess in the very end of the foam, on one end.

pictures here are from the 2019 NGRC in Oregon. Currently, they have been re-scheduled for release in April 2020

Observations:

What the heck, terrible rolling resistance!

I took them out, and tried to run a train... what the heck? Derailments and stringlining. At first I thought I had some track issues, but I can run a 10 car consist of the USAT streamliners. After recently struggling with Aristo heavyweights, I even removed a couple of S curves.

So why are my brand new cars, which are essentially identical in construction to the streamliners derailing. FRICTION!. Why are the heavyweights different than my streamliners? They both use the same carbon brush arrangement on the back sides of the wheels.

BUT! While the streamliners are nickel plated with a mirror (and I mean it) finish, the heavyweights have a blackened, matte finish. way more friction.

I noticed I could hardly pull the train myself, no wonder it stringlined.

I bought a scale a while back, figuring I wanted to compare rolling friction caused by my encounter with the Aristo-Craft Napa Valley train of heavyweights, so I bought an inexpensve luggage scale with the intent to add a coupler:

This was a good start, but when pulling a car the screen pointed sideways, so I would have to lean over and put my head near the rails to operate it.

What I needed was the display mounted on the top side, as I was pulling a car:

So I pulled the display out and used some double stick foam tape to mount it facing up. I also removed the swivel assembly and bolted a Kadee to it directly. It works. I will eventually make it prettier by cutting up the original fascia and bolting the display back in and mounting it.

Now to measure. The unit will "hold" the measurement after it stays stable for 3 seconds.

So, without cleaning or lubing, I decided to do some measurements

First to measure, my Aristo full baggage car, which has power pickup from the axle journals, so very low friction, it has 3 axle trucks.
0.24 lbs

Next the aristo RPO car, which is longer
0.14

USAT observation
0.30 to 0.32 pounds

4 usat cars
1.12 to 1.14 pounds

All this on the straights, a little more on curves

the test subject is the USAT combine car, which they call the club lounge

0.22 to 0.28 before modification

So, ridiculous rolling friction, go to the USAT H/W Truck mods page to see more details and how I am solving this problem

Adapting Kadee couplers:

Once again Colin Camarillo and Ted Doskaris have made an excellent mounting kit for these nice cars:

https://www.camarillopacific.com/campacbox/

Here's the installation guide, which also gives some nice pictures of the coupler mounting area:

https://www.camarillopacific.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/AristoHeavyweightUSAT_3axleTruckCamPacAdaptorInstallGuide.pdf

 Disassembly:

There are 4 long screws in the 4 corners underneath. Now sit the car upright, and the roof should slide sideways about 1/2 inch and you can lift the roof off. On my cars, the roof slid towards the end that has the generator on the center sill.

Sub-Pages

Adding clearance for the heavyweight trucks & improving the truck "attitude"

Overview:

These cars are famous for derailing. On problem is lack of lubrication on the pivot and bearing surfaces for the truck, for both the old and new style trucks, and I have a Santa Fe set that derailed out of the box, and lubrication fixed it right off. After all the stories, I made sure I bought the set with the new style trucks.

Now I am working on some Napa Valley Wine Train cars, and most are the old style. As I had them in the cradle, I was checking how the trucks swiveled, and I found several places where there were downright obstructions to the truck movement, both up and down and side to side

The more I looked, the more issues I found. I may have been overzealous in removal of possible obstructions, but I was having issues after the Kadee body mounts so I took this on with Dremel cutoff disk in hand!

First issue, truck resting on large bosses at ends of car:

First, I noticed these large plastic bosses were darn close to the truck. I had noticed them before and wondered why the screw is recessed into the boss.

Well, the picture below sure tells the story, the damn truck is riding on these bosses! (clearly if the screw was not recessed, the truck would be scraping on the screw head, even worse.

Yes it is that piece of black plastic between the chassis bottom and the truck!!

OK, let's see these without the truck in the way:

Notice that the insides of these 2 bosses are ALREADY trimmed a bit, my guess is clearance issues with the smaller 2 axle trucks, whereas the 3 axle trucks ride on top of these bosses.

On newer style cars, there can be 2 more bosses with a screw on top, that can catch the truck. I'm going to put flat heads in there and recess them so the truck cannot hit them.

The screws are 0.300" long, and have a body diameter of 0.09" over the threads,

NOTE: do not do this modification on the platform end of an observation car. I suggest you follow Ted's reinforcing methodology for the platform, click here for Ted's vignette.

In any case, they have to go, they were actually TOUCHING while the car was on the track for chrissakes!

The hole is almost perfect for a 3mm metric screw, Ace hardware has 10mm long ones, .5mm pitch. These are "Truss head" a wider and lower profile head

No more clearance issue now!

 OK, now not much you can do about the screws that hold the bulkhead in place, but there is more clearance there:

Next issue: Truss rod anchor points:

The raised mounts for the ends of the truss rods also can conflict with the truck, and since these cars did not have the stanchions, I removed the interfering block of plastic:

Much more clearance with the uneeded "blocks" ground off:

Next issue: Truck "attitude" affects clearance:

Basically, there are two pivots for the truck, one that is a post and a hole in the truck, and the other a post and a curved slot. Unforunately the design is that the main post is way off center in the truck so the weight of the car "tilts" the truck, and it in turn causes less clearance under the truck. 

In the picture below, you can see how "tilted" the top of the truck is, which affects clearance, and worse, runs the suspension to extremes at both ends of the truck. Look closely, the right hand journal is all the way up in the truck sideframe (since it is taking the majority of the weight).

Similarly, the left hand journal is almost completely unloaded and is at the bottom of the journal "slot" in the sideframe.

Looks awful and cannot be using that sprung suspension well.

By placing a thin washer on the other post, the one in the curved slot on the chassis, the car weight is brough much closer to the center of the truck. Again, look closely, first, it's clear the truck is much closer to level. But notice there is space both above and below the journals in both end axles. This just must be better.

Below is the part number for the washer in Ace hardware, a thin nylon washer (I'll add the thickness, and the center hole needed to be enlarged a bit)

One final area of interference:

After all of this I was in pretty good shape, but still got an occasional derail. Looking closely, I saw that the truck frame, even though trimmed flush (removal of coupler tang) would hit the back of the Kadee shim block. I beveled the rear of the Kadee block 45 degrees and then lightly ground the underside of the truck frame to put a small chamfer on the sharp edges.

The picture below shows how the truck frame will go over the raised block. I'll add a better picture.

EggHaulers

A cute little car, developed 7 years ago (from 2019) to compliment the then Aristo Eggliner, and currently the Bachmann made version.

I've had an eggliner for some time, but finally catching up to my projects and wanted a couple of cars to go with it.

The one below has an insert that raises the inside

In the above picture, it's fairly obvious that these are printed with a 3d filament printer and not super high resolution. But to offer at a reasonable price, this is the way it is.

In the picture below, you can see the sideframes are printed. You can also see the proper outline for a Kadee 830/906 coupler box, the standard for rolling stock. More about couplers later.

Let's look at wheels: The design has to have pretty wide-spread sideframes. These are Aristo standard wheels. You can see that the face of the lower wheel is contacting the sideframe. While this probably won't cause any issues, I wanted some clearance, and the excessive side to side play is not necessary.

 So I went to my friendly Ace Hardware, and bought some 4mm nylon washers. A couple on each axle tip solves this issue and still leaves plenty of side to side play:

Now on to couplers. As you can clearly see in the pictures above, the standard and unique footprint for the standard Kadee "slack action" coupler for freight is printed in the base. But when I bolted one on, to my chagrin, the coupler height was way off. Now, operationally, with such a short car, this will not cause overriding issues with the couplers.

But, I tend to try to make all this stuff perfect, and of course the coupler pin is now too low and the pin will need to be bent up to have proper clearance. Anyone that has used Kadees knows the sickening "thunk" when a low hanging coupler pin catches the rails in a switch and everything comes to a halt. Since I use the uncoupling features of the Kadees, this was not acceptable to me.

What to do? Since the coupler box needs to go higher, trimming the underside is not acceptable unless you want to mill a slot in the base and glue the coupler on. Gluing to these 2 very different types of plastic is problematic, and I searched for an easy solution, especially for people that want to just bolt them on, and also keep in mind if you have younger engineers, you want these mounts to be sturdy when cars are crashing into each other.

I found that if I did not use the top lid of the draft gearbox, the height was better. So by sanding the 3 lugs of the gearbox flush, I could mount the coupler. Because there is no top lid, I needed the coupler to not drop down into the rest of the printed base, i.e. the edges and center boss are higher.

So, by adding 2 shims about the thickness of the center mounting boss, the coupler was controlled. Below you can see the 2 shims. This allowed using standard Kadee self tapping screws at all 3 locations and a secure mounting without glue.

Now, that is much better: Standard Kadee couplers at the standard height!