Weighting ABS rolling stock?

I have used rolls or partial rolls of pennies taped inside of boxcars. The price is right. I have bought a few items that had fishing sinkers in them.

 

On an MPC era engine that was trouble pulling anything, I added a few cut offs of 1" keystock. That really did the trick, but would likely be pretty expensive to buy this material.

 

I have a few gondolas that I loaded with old tubular rail.

 

I would think filling hoppers or gondolas with a fine sand would weigh them down enough, but you would have to figure out how to keep it in them.

 

J White

 

The NMRA has a "recommended practice" for weighing rolling stock:

 

http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/rp-20_1.html

 

Of all my rolling stock, Atlas cars are usually the heaviest.  Flat cars are usually the lightest and the most difficult to add weight to.  A couple of my Atlas cars are actually heavier than what the NMRA recommends.  Most of my flat cars need 5-8 ounces added to them to meet NMRA practices.

 

With that said, so far I haven't added any weight to them.

 

When I built this Seaboard Whalebelly Hopper I added almost 16 ounces of lead inside:

 

 

I've found that cars riding on metal trucks stay on the track fine, those with plastic trucks don't.

LEarning the HArd way, I weigh Most of my rolling stock with NMRA practice of 5 oz plus 1 oz/car length. works wonders on performace, esp weaver rolling stock with plastic trucks and couplers!  One exception are the MTH premier autoracks...

while they come NMRA weighted, they are still "top heavy". I overweight them to 30 Oz total in the center sill frame to combat the "top Heavieness"

I use 1oz automotive tire weights, they have an adhesive backing and you can stick them anywhere.  I stick them on the bottom or inside boxcars, and typically on the bottom of gondolas. 

NMRA standards work well if you can stay close to them with some consistency.

 

What to use: pennies, commercial weights with peel & stick adhesive, BB's, tire balancing weights, various types of loads, lead foil flashing, tungsten, etc.  Just about anything that's got reasonably high density.

 

How & where to secure: depends on type of car and material it's made of as well as whether you want it to be removable at some future date.

 

Almost all of the cars that I have are weighted with 2 mm lead foil that is secured in some location that is not visible by use of a combination of Walther's Goo and medium viscosity CA.  Some cars are more difficult than others to be "discrete".

I have found that if the wheels roll well and have "slippery" treads like Athearn delrin trucks, the weight does not matter much.   I can mix and match some wide variety of weights and get good tracking with no derailments.   

 

The Atlas plated wheels are very slippery too.  

 

I think this works because on curves the inside wheels do not have to travel as far as the outside ones.   That means one or the other side must slide a little through the curve.   If they don't slide or roll well , they tend to pick rail joints and find any other issues.   

 

On the very lightest cars such as the Intermountain reefers, I have had to add a couple oz of weight.   but I run original Weaver cars with plastic trucks with no weight added and no derailments.

I use lead weights wrapped in duct tape and labeled as to content so that my heirs don't eat them!  Then I hot glue these over the trucks of the boxcar or passenger car or whatever.  Gondolas get filled with whatever scrap metal is handy.  Been going OK so far and I like the idea of self stick automotive weights.

So many ideas! WHEW.

 

I am liking the peel and stick/hot glue idea/Medium viscosity etc.

 

Lead, not so much. I already deal with some in my other hobby and don't like the stuff. Rolls of pennies work well, and keeping them in one spot is a challenge to consider.

 

The one TOFC on flat is "Tippy" as expected and a new rule on the railroad is to put those in the back by the caboose.

 

How much weight can a MTH Bridge handle? Heck some of the stuff is approaching 20 pounds, especially that Decapod.

Lee

 

Any of the MTH or Atlas bridges will be fine with weighted freight cars.  They were designed to handle diecast articulated steamers that are far heavier than freight cars.

 

As mentioned above, the NMRA standard is pretty good.  Starting with 5 ounces and adding 1 ounce per inch of car length in O scale makes for a 15 ounce 40 scale foot/10 inch long box car.  The Atlas Trainman and Lionel PS-1 40 foot box cars weight in at right about 15 ounces.  MTH premier 40 foot box cars and reefers consistently tip the scales at 17 ounces.  Atlas Massterline 40 foot reefers and box cars weight 19 to 20 ounces.  All will run well together anywhere in a train up to 20 or more cars on O-72 curves and grades up to 3%.

 

Personally, I like to have cars a little over the NMRA recommendation.  I find 17 ounces to be just about the perfect weight for a 40 foot freight car.  Any weight in the 15 to 20 ounce range will work fine and scales out to 50-70 tons, a realistic range for a loaded 40 foot box car in the real world.

I run traditional sized rolling stock.  The MPC cars are way too light, and those will clothesline on some curves if I have a long consist.  Weight helps a lot.

I just finished adding a couple of new purchases to my inventory list.

 

Looking at my list I noticed that most of my lightweight cars are flats, gondolas, and tankcars, needing 2 to 8 ounces, depending on the car, to come up to NMRA RP.

 

Good thing is all 3 of these cars can be made heavier.  The tankcars can have BBs added inside them.  Flats and Gondolas can have loads added to them.

 

One of my new cars is the AtlasO 50' PS-1 Boxcar lettered for Seaboard.  It's a whopping 24.1 ounces, approx. 4oz over the NMRA RP.  It's the biggest freight car I have, makes my MTH 50' 90-ton Airslide Hopper look small.

I have some of the Lionel 6465 cars with the diecast frames.  For traditional sized cars, they have a nice heft to them and they track very well.

Curtain weights, held in place by a bit of double-sided foam tape.

 

I just put pictures of cream cakes by the side of the track. 

I buy a bag of the biggest fishing weights at the big box store and glue them inside cars with GE Silicone tube sealant.  The silicone is better than glues as it will take some shock that some glues will not. All my scratch built cars and most of my all plastic get some weight.  One big sinker over the rucks work well.

I've used pennies for years when I need to weight cars or locos where I have the room inside.

 

I know there is a standard but I really depend on feel and performance  (try a few, add a few more pennies if it does not seem to work well).

That's why I use the self-stick wheel weights, they come in a convenient 1oz size.

I plan to weight my hopper cars by filling the bottoms with either lead fishing weights or Bbs, whichever calculates out to be cheaper by weight, and pouring epoxy over them.  It even occurred to me that I could probably line the bottom with seran wrap and make removable molded weights, but my cars are weathered so I'm not really worried about devaluation.

I have used Lead shot left over from producing shells... and elmer's gel glue to hold it all into place. Let's say the results were ok, however not that great of a solution long term.

 

I am leaning towards copper BB's and silicone for the hopper cars and so forth.

 

My father remembered how the model ships used to be ballasted with candle wax I don't know how such a exercise will work.. Melted crayon in bulk might work well also.

Why would you use copper instead of lead?  I use the heaviest material available.  Wax is pretty light, it would take quite a lot to make a difference.

Lead fishing sinkers and a little masking tape. I have hundreds of these, and they are all marked with their weight. I like things that work for both of my hobbies!

Fishing sinkers and car balance weights are no longer lead, but are a base metal with some of the characteristics including weight.

They are much more brittle than lead. Not a factor for us and still usable.

 

I simply made a balance with a 30" piece of track centered on a pencil. I taped a dowel facing up to catch the coupler on each end.

Then I took a car that tracked well (Any of my MTH Reefers) and set it on one end.

I then put the light car on the other end and add weight to make them balance.

If a piece of wt made the light car heavier, I left it off/out.

I epoxy the wt to the underside out of sight if possible.

If it goes in a boxcar or such i Just duct tape it over the trucks.

gondolas get scrap loads of whatever I can find on top of the lead.

I am using scrap lead strip from work. Do not use this if kids will access your cars unsupervised - EVER.

I have not had a stringline since doing this and have run a 58 car consist behind my Big Boy around my layout (including a shallow S curve) many times.

 

Thinking about this has brought a smile to my face, I have two great nieces coming over tonight. There is no doubt the trains will run.

Letting them run trains is ALMOST more fun than running them myself.

Pennies seem like an easy find/fix and are are approx 181/pound ($1.81).  What's the cost of fishing weights?

 

Now if you can get hold of some English King George VI pennies you might be able to do with a lesser number being they were so big (I miss getting packages from my Welsh Grandmother).

 

The cars I have that are underweight probably average 4oz or so under the NMRA RP, still they track well at the speeds I run my trains (usually less than 30 smph).

to do 4oz, you'd have more than 40 pennies, they get a bit large when you get a lot of them together.

I weigh all my new cars when I get them and bring them up to NMRA standard exactly.  I use some of the methods mentioned above but one that hasn't been mentioned is for tank cars.  Most of them can be opened either on the end caps or the the dome cap comes off.  I pour track ballast inside until they reach the proper weight.  I have made a NMRA weight standard chart in Excel showing the proper weight in 1/4 inch increments from 8 inches up to 22 inches. If you would like one, send me an email.  It is so you don't have to do the math over and over when weighting your cars.  Just look at the chart.

.....

Dennis

I use fishing sinkers adhered to the train with hot glue. I align the weights as close to the trucks as possible.  I have found the older Weaver cars tended to be lighter and warranted the most attention. Run performance significantly improved. The new Atlas-O and MTH rolling stock come weighted enough and run well without added weight