Metal wheels vs plastic

[lmackattack]

last week at the club we had a member bring in this 2 axel steel mill car that he bought at a local swap meet. this car is used to haul misc sheet steel around the mill. its only about 6 scale feet tall and 10 scale feet long and has plastic wheels. when placed on the track it would roll down to the lowest point that even your eye could not see! we could give the car a good shove and it would roll thry 2 block sections before stoping. each block is about 25' long. never have I seen a car roll so good and it had plastic wheels! I can only imagine how far it would roll if it had metal wheels. on the sections with a down grade this car was traveling 75' its only issue was it would 3 wheel over uneven curves and derail if going to fast. you had to see it to believe it!!

 

[UP2CSX]

I don't think we should confuse plastic wheels with rolling qualities. Good Delrin wheels mounted properly in a slippery sideframe will roll at least as far as metal wheels and sometimes further. Some of the earlier Athearn 100 ton plastic trucks were the best rollers I ever had. The real issue is whether plastic wheels promote more dirt accumulation the rails. My unscientific opinion is that they do, given the amount of crud that collects on plastic wheel treads compared to metal. With some trucks, switching to metal wheels makes them slight less free rolling. That con is more than offset by the metal wheels keeping the track cleaner, as well as they sound a lot better.

 

[TaeOH]

Micro Trains Trucks come with Nylon wheels instead of metal or plastic, a hobby shop owner said those are a good choice in N. He thought that the track would stay cleaner using them over metal.

What do you think?

 

[Rico]

I also prefer Intermountain / Branchline wheelsets, good rolling, good weight, and metal axles run truer than some plastic ones which can get a little bent when installing.
As for the rolling issue, unless I missed it no one has mentioned also "tuning" or reaming the trucks with one of these little gems: http://www.micromark.com/HO-TRUCK-TUNER,8241.html
Every toolkit should have one!

 

[UP2CSX]

I've got one of those truck tuners, Rico, they do a great job. Especially with metal replacements wheel sets, it can turn a truck from practically frozen to free rolling.

As far as N scale, I assume the same principle still applies that plastic wheel sets pick up and deposit more crud but I don't know for sure. Maybe one of our N scale guys can give us more information.

 

[NYO&W]

my 2 cents

I'm new to the forum so I started a similar thread in the N scale section without realizing the topic is already covered here. OOPS

Here's my 2 cents anyway:

After the first season plastic wheel sets were banned from running on my layout. I find that they consistently deposit a thin film of plastic on the rails which then re-deposits on the wheels of my locomotives, resulting in electrical contact issues. I was faced with frequent running problems and constant need for cleaning the drive wheels on my locomotives. This problem could not be blamed on traction tires because none of my locomotives had traction tires at the time. Now I have several locos that do have traction tires with none of the same dirt transfer issues that I’ve had with the plastic wheel sets.

The problem immediately went away once I began operating rolling stock with metal wheel sets only, or those that I’ve converted from plastic to metal wheel sets. Of course now I cannot operate Magnematic couplers in the traditional way but I can live with the trade-off by using a manual pick to do so.

 

[bnsf971]

From an N scaler:

For whatever reason, metal wheels seem to pick up more crud than the Delrin wheels do. I removed all the older metal wheels/axles and replaced them with the Delrin wheelsets. The only time I have a problem with crud on my plastic wheels is when a friend comes over to run his trains, and his metal wheels leave crud for my plastic wheels to pick up.
Part of it may be a better quality plastic for N scale, or lighter weight on the wheels, less mass, but I have several hundred cars with plastic wheelsets and no crud.
HO was a completely different story when I had it. I had to switch to metal wheels because the plastic ones would get gunked up in no time flat.
Anybody want to 'splain why one is better in N, and the other is better in HO and larger?

 

[UP2CSX]

Terry, I suspect there are several reasons. The first is tha many "metal" wheels in N scale are actually metal rims with plastic centers. The dissimilar materials may promote the metal tread getting more dirty. I think your guess about less weight and mass is also correct. An HO wheel exerts logarithmically more downward force on the track than an N scale wheel. An HO wheel also has more tread in contact with the rail surface, especially when the generally smaller flanges of HO wheels are considered. Although this is an imprecise term, an N scale wheel tend to "float" more on the track surface than an HO wheel. I think this leads to plastic wheels not being such a source of contamination in N scale than HO scale. That's my WAG guess, anyway.