Theory vs. Practice: The AC&Y Spur 4 Commissioning Process

[SAH]

If you've stumbled upon this thread and have not checked in with the AC&Y Road of Service thread in the Layout Engineering section for awhile you may wish to do so.  Many of my references here will be to posts in that thread. 

I've finished running all the Spur 4 jobs and have learned a lot.  A good bit of what I've learned is related to informal standards I've followed over the years, usually based on the advice of layout owners and folks on this forum.  Some of what follows is of the "Here's how I'm going to proceed based on what I've learned" variety.  For other items I'd like some perspective from TRW community because what I've learned seems contrary to the perceived wisdom.

Track - The gold standard is hand laid turnouts.  No argument from me.  Trackwork on the one layout I frequented in NC using all hand laid turnouts was flawless.  Other layouts used predominately Atlas turnouts with some other brands sprinkled in here and there.  They all ran very well too but not quite to the flawless category.  The Spencer/Litchfield section built and run prior to Spur 4 were all done with Micro Engineering products.  They performed well.  Because I came into a bucket of used Atlas C55 track on the cheap I went the prefabricated turnout route, despite being aware of the failure points frequently discussed here.  I cleaned and tested the turnouts I installed (some of them had been ballasted) took as much care as I could during installation (trackwork is not one of my strong points) and hoped for the best.

Happily the results have been better than I expected given all that I've read about Atlas C55.  Despite some of the rail and frog tops being scrubbed down to the base copper colored metal, I've had no problems.  Curves and #10s - No problems.  The one #5 I did have trouble with looked good upon installation but shortcomings became apparent when put to use.  I should have used a #7 at that point and will replace the #5.  The yard ladder, comprised of the dreaded #5s, performed with no issues even while pushing long (12 cars) cuts for classification.  I ran the commissioning with an Atlas S2 to get experience with the shortest wheelbase loco likely to be used.  No electrical drop out issues were noted.   Photo below.  So I'll press forward, check the components for the Mogadore Valley installation a little more closely and perhaps make some tweaks to address the design issues.  Right now though, I'm not sure that is necessary.


I'll take a break and cover wheel sets and couplers next:  A far more unsettled area in my experience so far.  My cat insists that I take a short nap every afternoon.  She says since I'm getting old I need to slow down and stay rested.  The fact that when I lay down she immediately climbs on my belly and stretches out to maximum body contact/ heat absorption position suggest another motive for her concern.     Life is good.

Steve

[SAH]

Wheel Sets  My standards for freight car appearance have changed over the years.  I was once all in for strict prototypical appearance, proper decoration on the proper car body and all that.  Age has a way for mellowing one's standards.  I still want my rolling stock to look good.  Special AC&Y signature cars should look better than good.  Same for cabooses and locomotives.  There's a limit to how far one can go in N scale without bumping into the law of diminishing returns though.  Take under body details.  I could care less.  A slab providing the proper weight, proper ride height and body mounted couplers would suit me just fine.  I realize I'm in the minority on this point.  That's OK.

The current standards are, in order of importance:
  1) Reliable operation
  2) Reliable operation from a reasonably prototypical looking coupler
  3) Pleasing ride height
  4) Prototypically plausible decoration on a prototype based body style
A car might be rejected for failing any one of the standards.

Except for recent purchases nearly all of the fleet started with truck mounted couplers.  Body mounts contribute to reliable operation.  I fought that notion for years but experience running on other folks layouts has convinced me it is true.  I've followed the conventional wisdom of using MicroTrains 1015 couplers whenever possible.

I like to mount the coupler box further back from the end face of the car than is custom it seems.  I think a visible coupler shank detracts from the appearance of the car and the appearance of the train due to the wide spacing between cars.  The trouble I most frequently encounter in the height lowering / coupler box placement process is the screw that holds the coupler box in place winds up directly beneath the wheel set axle.  The screw head interferes with the axle movement.  Flat head 00-90 screws help sometimes as does scrapping out a bevel in the coupler box cover.

The plastic Atlas wheel sets that come with Trainman series cars have an axle diameter of 0.043".  Installing a set usually solves the interference issue.  From there the axle diameter goes up to 0.053" on the FVM wheel sets, which almost never works.  I have what I think are BLMAs at 0.049," which sometimes work.  As a last resort I use a MicroTrains wheel set with standard flanges and whittle away at the axle to reduce the diameter.  It works but I'm likely to get a wobble in the car movement because the thin axle makes the wheels ever so slightly out of true.  I like the metal wheel sets but since the AC&Y is a dark railroad I don't need block detection,  plastic wheel will do.  I do believe metal wheels track better than the plastic variety and I'd love to use FVM or BLMA on all cars.   My mentors tell me plastic wheels get dirty faster too.  I don't know.

Am I the only one who experiences this interference issue when lowering the ride height?  Is there a 0.043" axle diameter metal wheel set out there?  With the current offerings this is a solvable problem and not a big one at that.  I suppose if I had to choose between a shortage of toilet paper or shortage of metal wheel sets I'd pick . . . ummm, just a minute.  I have to ask my wife. 

[Tom L]

I converted all of my rolling stock to body mounted 1015s and it was the greatest improvement since switching from Rapidos to knuckle couplers. I also add extra weight to my cars.  I have a spot on my layout (where the train is in the photo) that has a switching lead of about 10” radius that has a curved Peco turnout on the end. I routinely back around this curve and through either leg of the turnout with up to 13 cars with no issues. I’ve tested it with 20 cars and no problems. The sidings curve back the other way through a turnout, so it’s pretty much a worst case scenario of a tight curve with a curved turnout and a S curve.  To add to it, a slight link has developed where the curve leads into the turnout.  When I did this with truck mounted couplers, the force pushing the trucks to the side would derail more often than not.

I use mostly FVM fine wheels with a mix of others, like ESM and BLMA.  My track is Peco Code 55.  I have modified some of the turnouts by shimming the frogs to prevent wheel drop. 

I have a Red Caboose 40’ flat car that has the underframe jammed full of tungsten and I can put it behind the engines and push a string of cars through the whole mess with no problems and it looks pretty dang cool. Without the weight and body mounts it would derail every time.

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Converting all those different make cars to body mounts, lowering them and using metal wheels was quite a experience for all the reasons you mentioned, but it was worth it.

Tom L
Wellington CO

[SAH]

Couplers  For Tom, myself and many others, converting to 1015s is the "answer", the accepted practice.  No more slinky effect when pulling a train.  However.  However . . . . In an industrial switching setting you're pushing as often as you are pulling.  As I was drilling the General power plant my hopper cars are going BOING BOING BOING.  And I thought "I spend all this time creating reasonably accurate models of freight cars and they bounce along like rubber balls on a string."  Hmmmm.

When I put the S2 in service I wanted to get to work testing quickly, so did not change the Accumates to uTs.  I was rolling along, using a kabob skewer to uncouple cars and it hit me.  "This coupler works really well."  The skewer never got stuck between couplers.  I never turned over a string of cars (exposing the fully detailed underframe  ) because I couldn't get the skewer out.  The uT equipped cars were still bouncing along on a push move.  Some of the cars I purchased as part of the track fire sale already had body mounts but were 1025s.  Bouncy in the other direction.  After running the Goodyear Reclaim job I gathered all the Accumate equipped cars I could find, mostly Atlas PS-1s and Bluford hoppers.  I started drilling a cut with the S2.  Uncoupling and coupling worked quite well.  And no slinky effect.  Hmmmm.

Now, I knew full well the slinky effect would disappear using Accumates.  What I did not expect, because I had no first hand experience I suppose, was the Accumate would perform the coupling/uncoupling task so well.  You know what's coming of course.

I seem to recall the Accumates having a rough debut years ago.  The couplers would spring apart, no?  The design is different now perhaps?  Does anyone run in an operating environment where Accumates are the rule rather than the exception?  I understand if you want automatic hands free uncoupling, 1015s and their brothers are the best choice.  More styles for unique mounting situations too.  I do not need auto uncoupling and would be willing to use special uT couplers as the need arises.  Accumate shank lengths are limited if I'm not mistaken.  I would just adjust the coupler box position as I do now.  The coupler head is slightly larger than the 1015 but I would give up the slinky in exchange.

Is there a downside to switching to Accumates?  Am I missing something?  My initial read on the Protomate is that it satisfies all my requirements.  How far away are we really?

Enough words for one day.  I look forward to and value the perspective of the Railwire community.   Thanks for your time.

Steve

[Tom L]

Regarding the dreaded slinky.  I use Accumates on my locos to reduce the slink. I also use Tru Scale or Unimates between locos run in multiples.  I have noticed that with the extra weight on the cars, it doesn’t seem to be a issue.  Maybe I’m just used to it, as most off my operating is switching at slow speed.

Let me run this by you guys.  On some of my cars, when I body mounted the couplers, I used a piece of styrene to fill the gap between where the center sill stopped and to about .020 from the back of the coupler box.  I think it was a a piece of .080 x .100 strip or whatever matched the center sill but didn’t interfere with anything.   The back of the 1015 box is open and when you push against the couplers, the spring compresses and allows the round back part of the coupler to protrude out of the back of the box (and bounce).  If the center sill piece or some sort of stop is close enough behind the coupler box, would it reduce the slink by acting as a backstop with the force pushing against it instead of the spring? 

I didn’t put the sill piece close enough to the coupler on the handful cars I did this on, to have the “backstop” effect, but it kind of got me thinking about experimenting with it. Maybe leave like a .005 gap to give a little spring action to operate correctly but reduce or dampen the bounce. Maybe the coupler would hit the stop and open and cause problems?

Tom L.
Wellington CO




 

[SAH]

I don't have a feel for your sill stop idea Tom but your comment on weight impacting car bounce got me to thinking.  The bounce seems most prevalent when pushing lighter cars such a hoppers, flats and gons.  I agree that heavier cars are not impacted much.  My target weight is 25g +/-2g for 40' cars and 33g +/-2g for 50' cars, the dominant length for rolling stock on the layout.  It's tough to get more than 18g in a 2 bay hopper without making it look like a scrap heap.  An experiment I think I'll try is putting accumates on some 2 bay hoppers and see what happens.

By the way, your city scene looks quite good.  It's apparent you spent a lot of time on it.  Well done.

[mrp]

Steve
I occasionally have the same coupler box clearance you do, and resolve it pretty much the same way you have – shaving the coupler box and messing with the screw head. Another way around it is mylar washers on the truck pin, which I do when the other stuff isn’t enough. The washers I have are in the .003 - .005” range, and one is all I have needed. They throw the couple height off a bit, but not enough to matter.

One challenge I sometimes have is clearance when I mount a resistor on the axle, and occasionally have to cut away some of the center sill. This is with 1206 surface mounts. Smaller ones are available, but too small for me the deal with. The newer cars are more prone to the problem, as they tend to have more under body detail than the older stuff.

I don’t have enough rolling stock with Accumates to comment on them. To the extent they come on engines, I usually leave them until they start acting up.

As someone else mentioned, I sometimes use Unimate (Red Caboose / Fox Valley) couplers on the middle unit of a 3 engine consist (an A-B-A for example). These are a good way to go if you know the engine likely won’t do any switching, as they eliminate false uncoupling.

Good luck with the layout.

Michael Pennie

[SAH]

Thanks Mike.  Mike's layout is where I learned that you can't beat hand laid turnouts for reliability.  It's also where I learned that I wanted nothing what-so-ever to do with Z scale couplers.  I think they were on a TrainCat caboose and I got so frustrated trying to cut the cab from the train that I just lifted the ?@#&$% thing from the track.  I don't think he knew about that little transgression, until now.

Steve

[EJN]

Where can you find Accumate N scale couplers standalone? I did a search, and it seems they are no longer available standalone.
Accumate HO couplers are available from Accurail.

The slinky effect and wheel wobble are probably the #1 thing I find most frustrating in N scale. MT truck mounted couplers
slink going forward, and body-mounted ones slink in reverse. I've experimented with replacing the springs with Kadee #622 knuckle
springs for the HO #5 couplers, they seem to eliminate the slinky effect but the side-to-side movement of the coupler becomes
much stiffer, and magnetic uncoupling won't work with stiffer springs. Not a problem for me, but replacing springs is a p.i.t.a and
there are more embedded in my carpet somewhere than I actually successfully replaced.

The Accumates I have on Atlas rolling stock seem to work well, but the trip pins fall out easily.

I tried McHenry couplers...meh.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I'm a big fan of my Accumates. Yes, they may separate if abused, but they come back together very easily without having to worry about finding a spring. The M4 Sherman demonstrated that sometimes ease of repair is more important than toughness.

As for the pins falling out, for me that's a feature, not a bug. Popping them out or cutting them off of MTL couplers is one of my first orders of business.

[Carolina Northern]

I've said this a number of times, but nobody seems to listen. Accumates work well if you do the same thing Microtrains used to tell you to do with theirs. Heat seal the boxes.

I agree with Ed, just as happy to lose the pins. More trouble than they're worth and aren't required to hold the couplers together.

Don

[peteski]

Accumates might work well, but they are ugly as hell! They look like some robot part (not a nice curvy, voluptuous coupler).

[SAH]

Walthers #150-23015 is the part number for Accumates.  And like many other items these days, are out of stock.  Maybe permanently, I don't know.  For my light car slinky test I'll just harvest some from undec Atlas PS-1s. 

I agree with Peteski up to a point.  They could look better but they're not bad and satisfy my Standard #2: Reliable operation from a reasonably prototypical looking coupler.  In the eye of the beholder I suppose.

Now, the Protomate.  Ahhhhh.     I can wait.  Guess I'll have to.

[Mark5]

The Atlas part is 23015 for Accumates. They produce them periodically.

I sometimes harvest them from trucks that have the coupler mounted to them.

Similar to a lot of things these days (BLMA 100 ton trucks, etc), they are often unavailable.

I prefer them in many applications - no slinky. As a plus they are smaller than McHenry (big) or Bachmann (bigger!).

Mark

[SAH]

I've said this a number of times, but nobody seems to listen. Accumates work well if you do the same thing Microtrains used to tell you to do with theirs. Heat seal the boxes.

I agree with Ed, just as happy to lose the pins. More trouble than they're worth and aren't required to hold the couplers together.

Don

The body mounted Accumates I've seen are all held together and attached to the frame with a screw.  I'll be the first to admit I've not seen everything.  I wouldn't think heat sealing is necessary in such an installation.  The Accumate installation as truck mounted coupler are another matter and I fully understand how the heat sealing would help.

Don's post got me to thinking about truck mounted couplers and how many coupler sets I ka-chunked off of trucks.  After some searching I found the pile in one of my parts cabinets and started playing around with turning the cut coupler into a body mount.  Results below.  At the bottom is the 1015.  The top is the ka-chunked coupler set.  Above the 1015 is a modified Accumate truck mounted box.  (Yes the coupler is installed upside down but I made another one right side up and it works fine.)  A clearance hole for a 00-90 screw has been drilled through.  Above that is the coupler box part with the coupler post drilled out and what I believe is a 1-72 washer slipped over the post.  The thought is by eliminating the top cover I may be able to also eliminate the axle clearance issues I described above.  The centering whiskers do not have the forward stops to preload against however and might impact performance.  I got this idea from a comment @learmoia made in the Protomate Demise Exaggeration thread.

Tomorrow I'll give the modified Accumate box a try on some of my slinkers and see what happens.