Has anybody else checked their wheels with the "Standard Wheel Gauge" I picked up some about 6 months ago just to try them out. Now I never checked the gauge when I put them in I just assumed ready for use
UP Mike: I spot checked the gauge on some of my Atlas 33" metal wheel sets for MT trucks. All those that I checked were in gauge. I've put these wheel sets on over 400 cars. Stay cool and run steam....
Guys, Are metal wheels that much better than plastic. Would you care to share the what the advantages are? Jeffthumper
Good metal wheels look great! I find they stay cleaner than plastic wheels, but opinions vary on this issue. Also, I like the clickety-clack that metal wheels produce over rail joints. "Hmm... they show up better on X-rays whenever I swallow 'em..."
European models, e.g. Fleischmann, Trix, Roco, all use metal wheels, at least the newer ones. The rolling quality is better IMHO. There is someone in Germany who sells replacement metal wheels at eBay.de, he has replacement wheels which fit older US models, but the contours are european, with BIG flanges. If I had a good source for metal wheels, I would change all plastic wheels by metal. But so far, I am only changing to MTL low profile wheels (LPW). Christoph
Jeff: I converted all my rolling stock to Atlas 33" metal wheel sets. They look better, stay cleaner and sound great compared to the plastic wheel sets. They also increase the performance of loco's on average about 20% because they roll better and cause less friction on the track rails. LT: If you converted your cars to metal wheel sets, your loco's that could pull 133 cars would now pull 160 cars. Stay cool and run steam.....
Interesting. I changed out my MT plastic wheels with Atlas 33" metal wheels and had noting but trouble. About 1/2 of them wobbled which caused derailments and a few were out of round which caused my rolling stock to hump as they rolled along. I ended up going back to MT plastic wheels. I contacted Atlas at the WGH Tour show this week end in Long Beach and gave them some of the wheels. It'll be interesting to see what happens......
They have been reports that certain batches of Atlas wheel sets had some problems. I've changed over 450 cars to the Atlas 33" metal wheel sets and haven't noticed any problems with any of the cars that were changed over from the MT plastic wheels. Stay cool and run steam.....
I have had the same problem, with about a 50% rejection rate. The plastic center has been inserted crookedly at the factory and I can't find any way to get them in straight after that's happened. The cars would make an N scale sailor throw up. The 36" wheels that fit MTL trucks seem to be the worst, 33" wheels that fit MTL trucks next, 36" wheels that fit Atlas trucks next and the 33" wheels that fit Atlas trucks the least problematic.
Low Profile wheels (with few exceptions) ARE the standard today. All current Atlas wheelsets will work on Atlas code 55 (unless you get one of their bad batches - which cause the cars to wobble). Micro-Trains persists with their pizza cutter flanged wheels, but at least they include low profile wheels too with all recent cars (past 2 years?). Recent LifeLike locos (GP20, GP60, etc) scrape along the spikes of Atlas code 55. I only have GP20s, and it's barely noticeable. I think if you ran a recent LL loco by itself, ONLY the slight noise of the scraping/bumping might give it away. My locos don't wobble or bounce around. My opinion only - others may have different experiences. "Hmm... try living with Kiz for a different experience..."
I've replaced the wheel sets on all 39 of my cars with Atlas metal low profile wheels. This includes MT trucks and Atlas. I've only come across three wheel sets that were "out of round", and one had a seriously bent axle. While I would prefer zero defects, that's not too bad. The biggest challenge for a newbie was discovering that there were different wheel sets for different trucks (MT's and Intermountains vs. Atlas). However, all is well and they seem to perform well on the Atlas code 55 flex track. Bob
I use the Intermountain 36" metal wheelsets in the Micro-Trains trucks by slightly drilling out the bearing holes in the trucks. I run into very few bad Intermountain wheelsets but when eventually I accumulate a dozen, I pack them up and send them back.
Would you say that the 33" size would fit all freight cars? What would you use for Passenger Cars? seems like both are the same size? Jeff Shriver
I too have had nothing but troubles with the Atlas metal wheelsets. I purchased over a $100.00 worth of them for both Atlas trucks and MT trucks from my LHS last week. As I started putting on the metal wheels, I tested each car by itself on a piece of flex track. It seemed to roll fine from on end of the flex track to the other. I put together about 15 cars, all of which rolled OK on my test flex track, and took them to my layout, and tried pulling them with a loco. The train didn't move three feet and I was getting all kinds of derails, and the cars just did'nt seem to be rolling right, swaying from side to side and up and down and the train literally would not go around a curve of 24 inch radius - it got stuck!! I have never had a problem on this layout with plastic wheels, and pull trains of over 30 cars regularly with no problem. Could I have one of those "bad batches" of metal wheels. Why would the cars test OK individually on the flex track and roll OK, and then NOT roll OK when being pulled in a train of 15 caras?? If they are a "bad batch", do I just reurn them to Atlas? Man, I don't know what to do. But I sure don't like being out over a $100.00 for this experiment!! Back to plastic for me, at least for now.
