Fox Valley wheels - with resistors

[Santa Fe Guy]

Good result Gary. I have long suspected that this could be an issue however I do not have the equipment to do the test you did. It's almost like not being able to solder to new pre weathered ME rail without cleaning off the weathering first. Well worth the effort to do the testing first then clean off the tread. My layout gets a lot of running however I might just get out to the layout and do some more cleaning of my metal wheels following your success. I have only one metal wheel with a resistor in each car and caboose so should not take to long to check.
Good stuff.
Rod.

[sp org div]

Thanks for the tip guys...
So where do we get the 33" wheel sets in bulk?   

[Cajonpassfan]

Well Jeff, you don't. They only come in 12-packs. But even at that, you can get the resistor wheel sets for only about 35 cents each more than standard wheels in a 100-pack....that seems worth it to me (unless you *like* to do the piddly work yourself, which *know* you do )
I get mine from that place in Jersey that's got Brooklyn in its name...
Otto

[sp org div]

It sounds faster to spin off the blackening than to glue on resistors anymore....  and the previous FV wheels have always been a bit light on the blackening.
They are out of stock on 33"... and have been each time I looked.
100 pack would be a good number., but I have only seen 12 packs listed so far...
Jeff

[mmagliaro]

Here's an alternative to the tedious process of trying to fit, solder, glue, or otherwise secure a tiny resistor in a
wheelset:

http://www.electroninks.com/resistor-pens/

I have bought the regular silver-ink conductive pen from these folks and it works really well.  I used it on
3 Kato Mikado wheelsets to cure the bad contact problems in the 1st run drivers, and the resulting path
is down very close to zero ohms (in the hundredths of an ohm), in the final path.

The above link are similar inks that get you a certain resistance per cm of path.  It seems like the ideal solution
for turning a regular wheelset into a semi-conducting one for detection.