rmt 6400 series freight cars

Did it derail going straight through the switch or diverging?  If straight check for an obstruction hanging from the truck such as the uncoupling mechanism.  If diverging maybe the truck on that car or the adjacent car doesn't have full range of rotation required for the switch radius.

 

Joe

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. It happened going both ways on the straight and going through turnouts to the left and right.

Is it the same car, or was it that if all the RMT cars were together, then a random member of the set would derail?

 

If there are derailments going through the straight portion of the switch, there's a chance that one or more wheelsets is slightly out of gauge.

 

I know for a time that Weaver's metal wheelsets had a slightly thicker flange than other makes, which made them slightly over-gauge (back to back spacing would be OK, which is how I think these are tested, but distance from the outer face to outer face was slightly wide). While they didn't cause any derailments, they did jack up the effort needed to pull a solid train of them through an 072 curve (to the point where I could trip the breaker on a MRC Trainpower 027 with just a pair of K-line S-2's)

 

---PCJ

Each of the cars seemed to face these problems until I spaced them with Lionel and mth freight cars. Still no problems since the alternation of the cars. hmmmm...

I've noticed some rolling stock, including brands other than RMT, will stringline on O-54 curves if they are too light.  If you put some weight inside the car, such as some bolts from the hardware store or fishing weights, you can solve that problem fairly easily.  Your problem sounds somewhat similar in that the cars may be too light to deal with pulling along the heavier cars behind them, so the RMT cars derail.

 

I have four new RMT cars down in the basement (two of them from Santa!), but I haven't had a chance to run them yet as I'm tied up with finishing a course for work.  If I get a chance this week, I'll see if they cause me a similar problem, but I think it may be the situation of simply adding some weight to the cars.

 

Regarding derailing across a Gargraves swich, I've had only two derailments in the last five years, both caused at the exact same switch by car trucks with "shoes" for activating dump cars or something else.  (They didn't go off the rails in one case, just split the switch.  The suggestion to check for something dragging from the truck or something else under the car and causing the derailment is probably your first task.

Sounds like the RMT knuckles on the couplers are too tight, and don't have enough clearence to make it around the curve. I've got a couple MTH 19th. century boxcars that have that problem as well.

I have watched a lot more closely. All cars and engines of all brands semm to bump up slightly as they go over the junction where the inside rail meets the outside rail of the turnout. It forms a "Y" at that spot. The wheel flanges cause the hop since the plastic at the Y is not very deep. I think what happens with 2 rmt cars ina row is that both cars hop and do not get back on the rails due to being just a bit lighter. I wonder if the rmt flanges are just a little bigger causing a higher hop. It would not take much. I seem to remember some forumites talking about dremelling a deeper groove in the gargrave switches. I wonder if the ross custom switches have this problem.

This is a problem with the older Gargraves switches. The frog is not deep enough to accommodate some of the larger wheel flanges. You can either take a dremel tool with a cutoff wheel and make the spaces between the rails deeper or what I do is pop the frog out from the bottom and grind some of the plastic off from the bottom of the frog so it sits deeper.

 

Pete

I have my RMT 6400 series boxcars directly behind my loco, with 12 cars trailing.  My track is FasTrack and the fly through switches both directions and a 90 degree crossing no problems, no derails, no stringlining.   I agree that that the cars are a bit light.  The RMT tank cars a bigger and heavier by comparison.

 

[I am wondering if the tank cars are scale and the RMT box cars are not?]

My RMT cars will sometimes derail on my fastrack 036 curves. As a test I put non RMT cars between them and now they don't derail. There seems to be a problem with running RMT cars together.  I have coal hoppers, depressed center flats, and cabeese from RMT and they all seem to have this issue but only when coupled to each other.

I am having a similar problem with atlas switches.  Both O-54 and O-72 switches are causing problems.  None of my other cars ever have problems on these switches.  It does seem to be somewhat weight related as I can see the wheels rise up and then cross the rail.  However cars in front of and behind the 4 RMT cars are lighter and they do not have any problems. This switch is at the bottom of a downhill 54 inch curve.  They derail here almost every time if I have a significant number of cars on the hill behind them.  The other switch is on a long flat section and the train is going through the straight part of the switch.  I'm going to try adding some weight and shoot some high speed video this weekend to see if I can tell exactly what is happening.  Will post any findings.