Bachman 3 to 2 axle truck conversion ?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Hello, I own a couple six axle Bachmann item number 18345 HO Scale Silver Series 52' Center-Depressed Flat Cars. My layout is full of 18" curves and switches. In general 6 axle locomotives and railcars do not run as well on it as their 4 axle counterparts, even my 30 year old tyco stuff.

Tonight I was feeling experimental and popped an end axle off each one of the trucks and boy did these flats run nice! Despite the way the weight is not distributed correctly between the truck mounting screw and the wheels.

Does anyone have a favorite set of aftermarket trucks they think would both look and ride decent under these?

Thanks for your time.

[Cjcrescent]

Try removing a middle axle and see how it runs. In earlier days, removing an axle was a way to get the longer trucks to go around a sharper curve. A middle axle was removed to keep the symmetry of the truck at least looking correct. Several modelers I knew even removed the middle axles on the old Athearn BB six axle locos, just dropping the gear set into place after removing the wheels from the axle set. They would go around a 15" radius curve with no problem at all.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Removing the center axle turns out to be better than running all three but not as good as using either the front or rear two axles. Interesting. Without the center axle truck "footprint" is similar to my best locomotive's. It also has two, two axle trucks. The locomotive weighs much more but I have weighted the railcar up to specs.... Wonder what the difference is. That locomotive is much older.

[Cjcrescent]

The difference is when the wheels removed are on the ends, the effective wheelbase of the truck is shorter than when the middle axle is removed. A shorter wheelbase will go around a sharp curve better every time.

If you feel you have to remove an end axle, I would remove the inner most axle. The "loss" of the wheelset is probably less noticeable than if the outermost axle is removed.

Sometimes if the car is weighted more than the "specs", (assuming you're using the NMRA RP's), it will track better. Some of my cars are definitely over "specs", some are right on , and some are under. The important thing is that all of my cars track well over the entire layout.

[Tuna]

I wonder if grinding off the flanges on one axle on each end would provide the tracking wanted yet still look like it has 3 axles on each truck?

[Larry]

If you fill that rocket w/BB's that car will stay on the rails & you won't have to take out any of the axles or just change the trucks to 2 axle Ath. Pass. car trucks. I have 3 of those drop center flats that use to have that rocket & now they have printer motor parts on them which are pretty heavy.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Originally Posted by Tuna

I wonder if grinding off the flanges on one axle on each end would provide the tracking wanted yet still look like it has 3 axles on each truck?

That is it! Thank you for thinking about that. One of my Tycos is using the metal axles I removed so I am going to grind down some cheap plastic wheels and throw them under there.

Yeah, I have some fishing weights mashed down under the missile already to bring it up to weight standards. That did help a bit. I wonder if making it locomotive heavy and just putting out an order that it has to ride first behind the locomotives would have totally fixed the problem.