Concerns regarding Amfleet Cars

[herc driver]

Believe me - no malarky intended!  I had a consist of 4 Amfleets and two Concor Amtrak cars and with one P42 there was just too much slippage, so I added another P42 and it ran fine.  Granted, the Concor couplers aren't very good so I had quite a few derailments between the Kato P42 and Concor baggage car with their fixed position knuckle coupler.  But with the HHP-8 - the engine I really wanted to pull 4 or 5 Amfleet cars with - there's no chance till I work more on the wheel sets.  Thanks very much for all the good ideas though - I'm going to get to work trying to reduce the friction from the car weight and obstructions from the truck plastic and pickup metal and get these things running better.  I'm going to try to file the pick up tabs tomorrow and see how that goes.  Where did you find your pick up tabs needed filing by the way?  Mine seem ok - but I'm really going to look hard at them tomorrow with a magnifying glass to see if they're part of the problem.  But how did you notice yours were causing a problem?

[airferber]

what tool do you use to file the tabs

[herc driver]

I used a very small metal file (standard kind you could buy in a set at a Radio Shack for electrical work/repair).  I removed each wheel and filed out the plastic holding the wheel set in place - being careful to not file away the opening of the truck so the wheels wouldn't fall out.

(My apologies for not answering sooner - just got back on line.)