Page 23 - September October 2000

Federal Street trackwork...
Micro-Engineering code 75 flexible track has proven durable and realistic in appearance.
With such a small depth of flange at our disposal, a level rail surface is highly desirable... and this means a flat baseboard surface and flat cork underlay. I tried my best in this department but was still not 100% successful, which is why it is essential to pay attention to wheelsets and their running in their trucks.
Wheelsets:
Freight cars use a mixture of NWSL and Alan Gibson wheelsets. NWSL on the front of the trucks and AG on the rear. There are two reasons for this... firstly the AG sets are considerably less expensive so I save money and secondly, and most importantly, the NWSL sets are non-magnetic so I can use electro-magnets on Kadees. Having the steel AG wheelset on the rear axle of the truck does not impair their operation at all. In the fullness of time I hope to have 100% NWSL as they are a genuine US profile, but it’s not a great priority. A few of the NWSL wheelsets were slightly out of gauge and needed adjusting, but it should be standard procedure to check every wheelset you use, anyway. A lot of the AG wheelsets had a small plastic moulding burr on the back of the wheel which needs to be cut off before checking, otherwise you might get a false setting. Two wheel rims came loose over the last few months, both of these being on AG wheels. Easily fixed, but the second time it happened it was on a freight car being switched in front of the public.
I couldn’t work out why I had a mystery derailment at first, but it meant I had to lift off the car in full view. Next time I’ll bring some spare wheelsets as this car was out of commission for the rest of the show.
Diesels (an Athearn SW9 by Paul Smith, an Athearn BS-12, and a P2K SW9) used NWSL half-axle replacements. No problems have been encountered so far. There is enough vertical play at each wheel under gravity to give excellent track holding and
we are very pleased with the results. We hope NWSL will extend their range to other manufacturers in the future... e.g. Walther’s SW1 (very big hint, Raoul). The only steam loco so far, a Sunset Pennsy A5s, uses Sharman wheelsets. You can see how I got on with these in a previous article. The loco is running well so far. The next steamer will have six coupled wheels to help electrical pick-up. Four is just not enough as she occasionally requires the dread finger-poke. I don’t want to add wiper pick-ups to the tender wheels at this stage lest I upset their ability to move up and down under gravity. A split axle set up would have been the answer but that’s a different ballgame altogether.
Since the loco was built Alan Gibson has now got four genuine P87 profile driving wheels in production. And there’s a very healthy range of P4 wheelsets out there. Skimming the backs of the tyres easily reduces the flange profile to near P87. I much prefer to de-insulate these wheels by soldering a wire from the tyre to the axle... but beware the consequences of leaving the iron on for too long.
Trucks:
I haven’t gone down the road of scale-width trucks because I wanted to invest my time in building a layout rather than hacking perfectly good trucks apart, shaving off a few microns and re-assembling them. When, or if, scale trucks become available then I’ll consider using them. Not everyone might agree, but my way of thinking means the layout comes first and foremost and freight cars can be altered anytime.
Federal Street rests on supports at home that bring it close up to eye level. This is good for observing the behaviour of the wheels / truck / track interaction. After the track was laid cars were run repeatedly over and over to see what was going on. Pin- point bearings were discarded... the most
effective combination was vertical play under gravity. Good old slop. It’s all you need, unless you get your thrills out of technical suspension systems... and you’re welcome to them.
I tried a number of trucks with pin-point bearings in the beginning, hoping that the rocking of the trucks around the axle was sufficient. It was not. All pin point bearing trucks caused derailments with only that tiny flange to keep the wheels from lifting over the tops of the rails. Removal of the bearings cured that completely.
The only car that has given any problem is a Bowser F30 flat car. I’ve removed the original Bowser trucks and replaced them with Roundhouse to see if that makes a difference, but there is still the odd derailment. Back to square one with this, but all other stock P2K, Accurail, Walthers, Red Caboose, Intermountain, F&C and Westerfield both with Walther’s trucks runs very well. On Federal Street gravity is king.
Cassette Train Storage System:
The aluminium angle cassettes have proven a great disappointment. I had a feeling they would. At the Tyneside Summer Show we used three of them for the first time instead of leaving just one in place as at the NMRA Ulverston event where running was much more relaxed, if we ran at all.
Too much talking going on, as you do at these meetings. The tiny flanges on the cars meant that it was very difficult to guarantee you had put them on the ‘track’ correctly. When each train emerged from the cassette on to the layout there was usually a wheel or seven off the road..... more than a nuisance when folks are watching. The solution, I reckon, will be to build a conventional, turntable storage yard as used on previous British outline layouts. Work on this has now begun.
OCTOBER 2000 23
John Wright