In jumping into the O scale hobby, I bought a bunch of old used Lionel cars, from various sources, of many different eras and designs. I have just recently gotten through with screwing down all of my tracks tight, and running trains of 7 or 8 cars. All of my curves are 031.
Right from the get-go, I started to have the stringing problem, in particular with the cheaper 1970s type plastic boxcars.
This week, I reached deep into my box of miscellaneous cars, and found four very old Lionel coal and log cars, all of which are very heavy, with steel trucks, steel couplers, and steel bodies. No plastic at all. They were also very long, so I am guessing that they are for O gauge only, not 027.
I hooked those cars to the engine and ran them at every type of speed, across every switch, and in every direction. I had zero derailments. And, they gave off a realistic click-clack sound as they traveled over every joint in the tracks. (Not the rattle that you get from light plastic cars.)
So, am now a big believer in heavy weight cars.
Does anybody know what years the all-metal cars were made? Were there any all-metal boxcars? (Not including Tintype of course.)
I guess I'll keep my other cars and start adding weight to those as well.
(John, those weights you are using look like flat nose hard-cast .45 acp.)
Mannyrock
