I may be kicking a dead horse, but I'm trying to restore some old rail cars I bought on eBay.  (I'm beginning to see why they wanted to get rid of them.)  Anyway, I thought I saw somewhere that there is such a thing as tools for reshaping the axle sockets on the trucks and the ends of plastic axles.  Do any of you know whether there is such a thing, and where I can find them?  I know I could buy new wheels and trucks, but I like to tinker a little, if I can.  I think some of these old wheels would work if they had pointed axles instead of rounded.

I got to where I'm pretty good at changing the couplers and adjusting their height.  I'm still learning how to deal with unsprung turnouts.  Now I'm trying to learn how to deal with trucks and wheels.  I discovered they are causing some of my derailing and dragging.  And unwanted uncoupling.

I have a couple of manual e-z track turnouts that I love.  I have several others that are designed to work electrically, but I don't love them; the points don't snap into place like the others.  I've been looking at ways to fix them and the Caboose Industries ground throw gadget looks like the most promising.  However, all the pictures and videos I've seen show them fitting onto a bar that is attached to the points.  My points don't have that bar; there is a lever on the side of the track bed that doesn't look compatible with the ground throw gadget.  Is there another similar gadget that would fit my points and/or that lever on the road bed?  I saw some videos that showed how to make some home made springs with paper clips or piano wire.  I could try that if I have to, but I'd rather find something easier.

I'm new to Model Railroading and am Very Ignorant.  I rigged up a reversing setup on my layout (I used three turnouts arranged in a triangle), but when I connected the tracks, they shorted out.  Duh!  Of course they did, but isn't there a way to rig a reversing setup?  (I have a DCC locomotive.)  (Sort of like when you pull your pickup into somebody's driveway and back out so you're looking back the way you came.)  I've seen pictures of this kind of arrangement, but they use two turnouts and a wye.  I thought that was probably so the tracks fit together better.  The way I had it, I was going to have to add in a little one and one-eighth piece of track.  I can get a wye if I need to, but it's the short I don't know what to do about.  Can any of y'all tell me what to do?

It just this minute occurred to me that I might could insulate the track somewhere in that arrangement.  Would that work?  (Somehow, I doubt if it would be that easy.)  (Just in case that wouldn't work, my question still stands.)

My new (and first) locomotive (DCC) runs at two speeds:  full speed and stop.  Could it be that I need to allow a break-in period, or am I supposed to oil it?  Or is it defective?