postwar 2500 cars

Check for out-of-gauge wheels and that the trucks pivot freely.

Pete

Thank you Pete. The wheels and axles do seem worn. Is there any way to fix out of gauge wheels on these cars? If not, would just replacing the wheel sets correct the problem? Also the trucks swivel smoothly. I thought the roller springs might be too tight. So I removed one and it still derailed same as before. How is the best way to check wheel gauge, and is there an acceptable tollerance?

Chris

In addition to Texas Pete's suggestion, check carefully for any bent axles.

I've noticed that a bent axle will cause cars to derail on switches.

Chris,

  One thing that is commonly overlooked is the wire to the roller pickup. If it is too tight, and does not have enough slack at the roller end, the tight wire will keep the truck from pivoting properly on curves, although you may be able to swivel the truck properly by hand. Try running the train in the opposite direction on your layout and see if the problem persists.

  Make sure the wheels are not so worn on the axles that they wobble, and make sure there are no bent axles.

Larry

I didn't see anything to indicate these cars had pickups, did I miss something?

  I do believe the 2500 series passenger cars are lighted, and have roller pickups, unless we are talking about some other cars here.

  Note that due to the design of the trucks and axles, the wheel gauge cannot change. If derailments persist, swap the car end-for-end and see what happens. Check the wheels, axles and truck movement on the good cars and compare with the affected cars.

Larry

Thank you all.I have been out, and have to leave again soon. I haven't seen a bent axle. I think they derail in either direction, I'll verify and let you know. Yes the cars do have pick ups and rollers, two per car. They are a clever deisign that does not have a wire. Power from the pick up goes through a spring loaded rivet(just like the leading or traling trucks on some PW steamers) that slides on an insulated metal plate on the frame. A tab from the plate contacts the hot side of the light.

Chris

As regards the lighting on LIONEL CORP. 2500 series Passenger cars, unless it was one of the earliest sets that were hard wired from the collector roller pick-up to the light socket, these cars had what was commonly called: "wireless pick-ups".The collector roller was attached to the mounting bracket by a long rivet that ended above the pick-up assembly in a spring-loaded eyelet. This assy. slide against a spring steel plate that was insulated from the truck sub-floor by a phenolic insulating plate that shadowed the steel contact, ending in a up-raised tab to contact a brass ring at the bottom of the light socket; thus, wiring should not be a consideration here. 

That said, I would first look at two things: remove that truck mounting sub-floor and truck assy. and see that they sit level on the track without any truckside dipping/out of parallelism to the horizontal. This would lift the wheels off the rails to some bit and cause poor tracking. Distortion at the truck mounting to the sub-floor also would mis-align the truck to the track.

As stated earlier, wheel axle hole wear is also critical causing the wheels to wobble, as well as move inboard out of gauge, and hence,the wheels will fall between the rails.  Bent axles will also contribute to the mis-alignment of the wheels to the track as regards gauge.  One must remember that the inboard wheel stops for the wheels on the axles were only "pinched points on the axle" and with little or no periodic lubrication would grind away at the rear of the wheels by the hole allowing the wheel to move more inboard, out of gauge

My own experience of derailing due to wheel wear was with a GG-I on a pony truck, as it entered and crossed a O72 switch. Toyed with it for a while and finally changed out the wheels sets with newer ones and no further problem. Closer inspection of the wheels sets removed, showed much play in the axle hole of the wheels and wear on the axles. Sideframe outward distortion (bending away from vertical) can also add to derail problems, and as always any and all of the above that I mentioned and others too, in combination, can cause problems. Hope this helps. Dennis M.

You are, of course, right, I was sleeping when I responded and didn't think about what these were.

Thank you so much to everyone who replied. One of the cars had a broken pick up and I ordered a complete new truck from Jeff Kane of The train Tender. Jeff was very helpful and I had the parts in 2 days. jeff@ttender.com I just checked the new truck/wheel set against the old ones, and it appears the old ones have worn quite a lot. The gauge is too narrow and the wheels are very wobbly. I think this might be the problem. So I'll call Jeff again and order some wheel sets. I will post back in a few days hopefully, and let you know if this fixes my problem. Thank you all for taking time to help me with this.

Chris 

CAA, i've had mine sice forever and always had derailing problems til I built a real layout w/ larger radius curves. They work fine on them.

My 2500 series cars didn't sit level when I first obtained them.

On my cars, each truck had a grounding washer mounted to the top, with three little nibs sticking up. On most of the trucks, one or more of the nibs were damaged, making the car sit crooked.

As a temporary work-around, I flattened the rest of the nibs on each truck. The cars sit level now.

I ordered and have replacement parts to put new ground washers on the trucks. But its been years, and haven't gotten around to installing them.

I don't recall there being a derailing problem with mine.

When the wheels are right the cars should run on 031 curves with no derailing. They will have quit a bit of drag going through them and don't look very good with all the overhang but they will work without derailing.

One thing you can do for many cars, including the 2500's, is to tighten up the truck connection so they don't wobble quite as much on the trucks.  That seems to help stability.

I had a "rivet party" where I cinched up about 50 Lionel cars with the riveted trucks to they didn't have nearly as much play.  Some of them had at least 1/8" of space between the truck and the body!  Small wonder they flopped back and forth a bunch running the rails.

I called Jeff Kane and ordered wheels and axles for one car. I should have them by middle of next week. We'll see if that helps.My cars do have wireless pick-ups like Dennis M described.When I remove the truck sub floor assy. from the car, the spring from the pick-up roller pushes that side of the sub floor up considerably higher. Also the truck mounting stud has too much play as gunrunnerjohn mentioned. I'll report back as I have time to work on these issues.

Thanks,

Chris

First these cars are known as the 2400 series, not 2500. 

Second there was a set of these cars from the lean postwar years of '64, and '65 that came without lights, or window inserts. So you can stumble upon a group of these cars without any roller pick ups.

Ken

2400 series I know, I got confused about 2500.  After the conversation carried on, I realized these were lighted passenger cars.

From the OP's description, he in fact does have 2500 series extruded aluminum cars with articulated couplers.

They were all illuminated except for the baggage cars.

Yes I have 2500 series cars, all lighted. Three coaches, one dome and one observation.

Chris