What years did MTL cars come with "pizza cutters"?

[peteski]

I know were you got that wheel set.

Jon

I do!     And I still owe you a decal set and a PC board for the 44-tonner.

[peteski]

Actually, as they were only marketed marketed as blister packaged (stock number MT-1057) twelve-packs of replacement wheel-sets, or found on pairs of factory assembled, blister packaged (stock number MT-1000) Bettendorf trucks, not used on any of the Kadee Micro Trains production models (including any of the first five, or eight, if all of the paint variations are factored in November 1972 releases), the cast metal wheels with the Delrin axles were intentionally omitted.

Part of an enhanced, historical trivia section, some of the aforementioned information was included in one of the original manuscript's revisions

That is fine Neville. I simply commented on what was published in your eBay writeup. I cannot see what info you have or don't have in your personal manuscripts.  The same applies to steel axle - that info is also incorrect (and as I mentioned it *DOES* make a difference).  At least to me.

[pmpexpress]

That is fine Neville. I simply commented on what was published in your eBay writeup. I cannot see what info you have or don't have in your personal manuscripts.  The same applies to steel axle - that info is also incorrect (and as I mentioned it *DOES* make a difference).  At least to me.

Peteski,

My reply should not be construed as a criticism of your response.

To the contrary, your comments (and those of a few other posters) caused me to dig up the last revision of the manuscript and add additional content that was overlooked.

If I determine there is a need for it, may eventually republish an updated copy of the document on another venue.

One of the only reasons that I lurk this forum is for the wealth of information that is garnered from posts related to manufacturers, manufacturing processes and equipment, model construction, and scale modeling.

In the course of numerous conversations and for supplemental historical research, your previous posts are frequently revisited.

You are an excellent reviewer, who has has a keen eye for minutia.

For my purposes, this extremely important.

[Sokramiketes]

A-yup. Not only that, but plastic wheelsets don't work all that well with current-based occupancy detection.

From what we've gleaned so far, I'm now waffling between fancy Special Instructions, or just telling the guys "Sorry," that their trains are fine for running on the club's N-Trak roundy-round, but it's the 21st century now and we do things differently. (Oh, that'll make friends. )

Code 70 track lifted quality of rolling stock on HO layouts that made the move.  One had to at least change the wheels. Then Code 83 came out to bridge the gap.

Atlas code 55 started the same movement, though now a lot of out of the box stuff has adapted including MTL. 

It's your house, guests should play under your rules! 

[robert3985]

When I started laying code 40 trackage, it was on a set of Ntrak modules.  It was quite evident from the start that even Railcraft C40, with its tiny spikeheads, still would not allow deep flanges to run on it, and being buckled up to other Ntrak modules, I could not restrict what kind of wheels ran on my modules.

The solution to the problem was to hand lay all of my code 40 trackage.  Since I was already building my own C55 turnouts (none were commercially available at the time) it didn't seem to be such a big deal to hand lay all of my C40 turnouts AND the track too.

After testing the deepest flanged rolling stock and motive power I could find amongst the club members on a 6' long C40 test module, it became clear that it all ran just fine on hand laid C40 PCB track. 

During shows, I also had zero problems with ANY motive power or rolling stock running on my hand laid C40 trackage.

Sooooo...the OP is going to have guests bring their own motive power and rolling stock to run on his layout.  The easy way to fix this problem is to do what I did...which is hand lay your C40 trackage.  You're gonna be hand laying your C40 turnouts anyway, so why not just lay your C40 trackage too?  Then all of the yadda yadda yadda about dates of MT pizza-cutters, round flanges vs sharp flanges become totally moot...because EVERYTHING will run on your totally hand laid C40, no matter how deep the flanges are.

After the Ntrak club disbanded and became a more prototype oriented LDE modular club, I still hand laid all of my C40.  When that disbanded and I decided to rework the standards into my own sectional, portable layout LDE standards, I decided to install ME C40 flex on my newly laid center sidings, and found that a lot of my motive power, which does NOT have "pizza cutters" will simply not run on it because of flange/spikehead interference.  I solved that problem by sanding down the plastic "spikeheads" on the inside of my ME C40 center sidings.  If I were to have guests using their own engines and cars coming to run on my layout, I would never have went for anything but hand laid C40 PCB trackage.

Although I've posted dozens of photos of my Park City Branch trackage before, here's another to illustrate my hand laid C40 trackage...

Photo (1) - Hand laid C40 PCB Park City Branch...PCB tie every 5th tie, wooden ties in-between.  Railcraft C55 flex in the background:


Additionally, the OP should be using Micro Engineering C55 for all your C55 layout sections as Atlas C55 has problems with pizza cutters, as I am sure you already know.

Using ME C55 flex and hand laid PCB C40 is, IMO, THE way to ensure full and trouble-free compatibility with anyone bringing pizza cutters to the party... 

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[peteski]

That makes perfect sense Bob. If you don't use spikes then there will be full 0.040" clearance from the rail top to the ties.

Quoting Mike's earlier post:

Both wheelsets have a tread diameter of 0.205" at the flange and 0.202" at the rim. Ribbed-backs' flange diameter is 0.276", corresponding to a tread depth of 0.0355". All-plastic pizza-cutters' flange diameter is 0.272", so tread depth is 0.0335".

So of course there will be no problem with the wheels hitting the ties. 

[dougnelson]

AFAIK, this double-wheel-set packaging was done in a response to the modeler's outcry about incompatibility of MT models with the newly-released Atlas C55 track while also trying to keep the MT collector purists with pizza-cutter wheels (which they wanted). The current wheels have flanges which have depth in between the low-profiles and pizza-cutters.

I need to run home and check my Richard Nixon president series car.  I hope it has pizza cutters to maximize its market value!  Collectors