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The last time my trains were run (at BrickFest) I experienced no end of troubles
with wheelsets that had all been used before with no apparent problems. Yes,
some of them are the newer super-friction specials but at the time they were
installed on my rolling stock they were fine and have been somewhat heavily used
at previous train shows.
Before I go into more detail I want to ask:
Has anyone else had troubles with wheelsets wearing out? How long does it
usually take? Is lubrication the answer or only costly replacement?
History of the problem:
1. I don't run trains at home much at all. My trains all stay boxed up between
events.
2. My track is all clean and most of the track my club uses is less than one
year old. Dirty track is not the problem.
3. At shows, we use super-powered fan-cooled train controllers (and we even
cooked one of them at BrickFest until it smoked). :) So low power is not the
problem.
4. All my locos have at least one Lego weight brick inside; most have two.
This provides exceptionally good pulling power, even uphill.
5. We run exceptionally long trains at shows. Two locos pulling up to 40
pieces of equipment and one pusher loco running for 2 or 3 hours non-stop is not
uncommon for my club. Our average train length is probably 15 pieces of
apparatus; even our Metroliner has 11 pieces total.
6. Our last event was for 10 days. For 7 of those days, we had trains moving
constantly for seven hours each day. Our long train of freight cars probably
ran for 90 percent of that time. No problems were noticed with any of the
wheelsets in use at that time.
7. At BrickFest, our club had a small local loop in the huge train layout. It
was loaded with curves such that no matter how much pulling power I could not
run a train with more than 6 cars for more than a few minutes at a time before
problems occured.
8. I ran one short train (one loco with 2 motors pulling 6 wagons) on the huge,
master loop track at BrickFest and after about a dozen trips around, I stopped
the train because I noticed something not right. What I found were several
wheelsets that made noise and some even had black sticky goo on the wheels. I
determined that due to excessive friction, the wheels got so hot that the sticky
goo was actually melted plastic from the wheels and/or the wheel bricks.
9. Basically, all during BrickFest I had troubles with my trains due to what I
think are worn out wheelsets. The cost of replacement is not a happy thought. I
will try lubrication and will also do some filing of the wheel bricks to reduce
contact friction of the wheel on the wheel brick.
10. Oh, yeah, I also had trouble with brand new wheelsets at BrickFest, but
that was no surprise as they are new super-friction specials being shipped in
sets these days. Those particular cars were removed from the tracks and packed
away on the first day of BrickFest. Some cutting and filing will be in order
there, I guess.
Okay--this got rather long. If you forgot why I started this post, see my
questions way up at the top of this post. :)
__Kevin Salm__
Lego Users of Central New York
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Worn out Train wheels?
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| (...) Hello, To all train builders ! Ok, So we have had a fare bit of a talk about 9v train wheels, and their problems. But I have a few 12v wheels and 7750 wheels that I like to run on 9v track.Do any of you know how to make 12v wheels go better ? (...) (21 years ago, 23-Aug-03, to lugnet.trains, lugnet.org.us.lucny)
| | | Re: Worn out Train wheels?
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| (...) layout. It (...) not (...) before (...) huge, (...) stopped (...) several (...) wheels. I (...) sticky (...) Being something of a newbie to trains, all of my wheel sets are the new Super Friction Specials (nice phrase, that :-). After making (...) (21 years ago, 27-Aug-03, to lugnet.trains, lugnet.org.us.lucny)
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