Ted S posted:Good job on the FM Bob! On steam locos it's not so easy... The wheels have to be pressed on in quarter. A small misalignment will lead to poor running, and a new quartering jig would have to be built for every different loco. Also, replacement wheels are very hard to come by. If the front and rear flanged wheels are identical, you might be able to swap a set from an identical donor loco. Then I suppose you could sell the resulting four-tired abomination to someone who wants to pull stumps from their yard, or climb an O-scale Mt. Everest.
Tires are only a must if you have unrealistic grades. For the record I'm not really a fan of Magne-traction either. It contributes nothing if you're running on Atlas track, or even MTH RealTrax. Just 1950s Lionel marketing gimmickry that was difficult or impossible for American Flyer to duplicate, and great for picking up ferrous debris near the track.
All of this grows out of a toy-train mentality that you should maybe build an over-and-under in 4 x 8. That's not a realistic expectation. IMO it doesn't look realistic, and it defies the laws of railroading physics.
When MTH ventured into HO scale in a big way, they did it right. Split chassis with "bottom plate", wheels / axles / bearings are removable as an assembly. They even included a rubber-tired axle in the box for those who wanted it. American Models S-gauge steam locos are also built this way. I just want the O gauge manufacturers to retool (a dirty word with the demographics of our hobby today) so that end consumers have a choice of tires or not.
All good points Ted !
Even if I had access to steam locomotive wheels I wouldn’t attempt to do a swap out on the grooved wheels ....I’m not that good !
