Empire Builder
Great Northern fanatic

Facts, information, & observations:
- It is a Mantua Mark II super detailed 2-8-2 Mikido steam
- It is painted & detailed for Great Northern
- The tender is a six-axle Vanderbuilt Tender
- the trucks on the tender are made of metal (sideframes & wheels)
- the tender derails on or near switches & curves
- Front truck of tender jumps the tracks just before the manual switch ( see atachments)
- it (the front truck of the tender) derails when pulling a load
- Does fine (doesn't derail or jump the tracks) when it runs by its self (no load)
- locomotive won't run when fron tender truck is derailed
- sparks occur between truck wheels & rails when it jumps the track
- When I added an Athearn Northern Pacific F7B in back of the Mikido, the situation improved, but still jumped the tracks ( it only derailed in one spot [right before the manual switch], vs. derailing at every switch w/o the B-unit)
- the radius of my curves is 22"
- My layout is 4x8'.
- exact same thing happens wheather the locomotive is traveling at high speeds or low speeds
- this problem didn't occur when I first got the locomotive
- Tende is semi-permenatly attached to the locomotive
- this problem hasn't occured on any other locomotives
- To see if the problem was the tender being too light weight, I tried adding weights to it to see if that would help: 1/2 oz. of weight- conditiond doesn't improve of worsen. 1&1/2 oz. of weight- condition worsens, it derailed 4 times vs. 1 time before