Santa Fe Coast Lines layout (fortinweb.com/swsf/), we have
named intermediate points between each town. That way, you
can give enough authority to allow work to occur in one or
more adjacent towns. Some people use milepost markers; we
name specific points on the layout (marked with a small card
on the physical layout so there is no ambiguity).”
“Because our layouts are always so compressed for space com-
pared to the real thing,” Byron says, “these extra landmarks
help us keep things moving smoothly without creating overlap-
ping authority.”
Charlie Comstock prepared a track warrant refresher for his
crews that is of interest to anyone starting out with track
warrants.
Go to
and a link to the PDF is near the bottom of the page, on the left.
Work-between warrants:
More ops discussion:
– MRH
Wheels won’t roll
Q.
I’ve been getting some of the Walthers 50’ bulkhead flats
lately. These aren’t bad cars, especially for the prices I’ve been
getting them, but the wheelsets leave a lot to be desired. I can
actually place them on a 3% grade and they stay! Has anyone
fixed this problem without replacing them? I got some of their
woodchip gons and they come with the same wheelsets, so I’ll
have even more to do.
– Steve
A.
The axle tip/truck reamers [4] from Micro-Mark
, Reboxx
and other sellers make it a lot easier to get free
Questions, Answers & Tips - 4
rolling wheels in your trucks. There’s no guarantee replace-
ment metal wheels will roll any better if they’re a tight fit in
the truck side frames or the bearing surfaces aren’t clean.
After hearing this, Steve said, “Thanks guys for all of the
replies. I got a product called ’The Tool’ ... I gave each axle a
spin … I found that the axle would free spin about 1 to 3 sec-
onds and come to an abrupt stop.I was surprised how much
plastic I would remove. The sooner the axle stopped during
the free spin, the more plastic I took off. I gave each a spin
after using The Tool on both axles and found that they would
free spin about 5 to 10 seconds and slowly wind down to a
stop. There was also a noticeable torque feel to the truck
that wasn’t there before, kind of like what a top or gyro
would give off. This has to translate to some improvement in
performance.”
4
4. “The Tool” truck bearing reamer cleans paint and
excess plastic out of the bearing points on plastic trucks.
MRH-Jun 2014
