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Chattanooga rolling stock with metal wheels

Started by sgthostile, September 12, 2018, 03:55:01 PM

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sgthostile

First off, I am new to this forum and model railroading. I did a brief search of my question and didn't locate what I was looking for. However, if my question has already been answered in another thread, please let me know.

I just recently purchased the Chattanooga and wanted to put metal wheels on the rolling stock. When I did, the wheels did not roll as smoothly as the plastic ones did. They are Kadee 33" wheels, but somehow I missed something somewhere. Any advice will be extremely helpful.

Thanks, Scott

Flare

Do you still have the plastic wheels?

Last time I swapped plastic for metal I found that the metal axles were larger than the plastic ones, causing more friction.

sgthostile

I do and I reinstalled them :(. What would be the solution to this problem? I now have 20 metal wheels that are unused (Fortunately I was able to replace the plastic wheels on my non-Bachmann passenger car). I've read that plastic wheels are terrible on metal tracks and would like to have metal wheels on all my rolling stock.


Flare

I managed to find some unbranded metal wheels on Ebay that had thinner axle points, they work great.

Unfortunately I don't see them listed anymore, but I'll ask the seller if he remembers where they can be found.

rich1998

#4
Some years ago I put Intermountain machine metal wheels on a bunch of my cars and used the Micro Mark truck tuner first. At the time, the club I belong to only let us use the Intermountain, not Kadee or plastic wheel. We kept a bag of Intermountain on hand.
A few cars I used Reboxx machined metal wheels because I could get different length wheels.
Always used the truck tuner first, just a little.

Edit.
Just remembered. We had a three foot piece of wood with a track on it to check rolling stock for free rolling and a digital scale for proper weight. Got the idea from MRR magazine many years ago.

Rich

sgthostile