Lionel Double Door Boxcars swaying too much

Sam, I have not had this happen on double door cars but on standard  Weavers and occasional other 40 foot cars. I have added weight to some and one other time I had a loose truck connection to the car and had to tighten that. Looking forward to hear other solutions.

My experience has been loose truck connections.  If there is not a screw to tighten, an easy fix is to wrap fine wire around the truck pivot point to tighten it up.

Ron

Agree with Ron. Screws for the trucks probably need to be tightened. Have had the same problem from time to time, and loose screws has been the issue in every case.

Pat

Older cars have trucks that are frequently riveted, those need more than a screwdriver.

It has nothing to do with double door box cars specifically: All types of rolling stock that have some sort of rivet holding the truck to the car body are prone to this. It could be a postwar metal truck secured to the car body via a C-clip, or a more modern type of rolling stock with plastic trucks and a pressed rivet.

All these rivets have some jiggle to them. If you need to see what I mean, take a piece of rolling stock, take it off the track and grab the coupler itself and move it up and down, and you'll see what I mean.

In part because Lionel used to ship the cars with the couplers turned inward beneath the train car. At any rate, it is the looseness of the truck mounting that will cause derailments, especially when running a longer length train, or running on a layout with track design no-no's, like turnouts directly after a curve, or on a curve itself. Or "S" curve configurations. OR when pushing a train backwards - because all the pushing pressure is on the couplers. So when the trucks are mounted loosely, this pressure will inevitable push one of the wheel sets up and off the track.

BUT when you have a small layout as I do, it is inevitable you will have some of these track design no-no's.

My solution is to remove the rivets on all rolling stock, save for operating cars that have a gear mechanism like the early LTI-era aquarium cars. I drill out the rivets and replace them with some sort of truss screw with a stop or lock nut. I tighten it all the way, and then loosen it just enough so that the truck turns freely from left to right, while getting the actual wobble of the truck to a bare minimum. And I don't have derailments at all, save for my own error, like forgetting to throw a turnout. And I'm using 027 curves with all sorts of the track design no-no's. I can push backwards a train through S curves with short light weight 8 inch MPC cars in the lead with much heavier postwar cars behind those, and still, NO derailments.

You could try Ron Ardnt's idea of wrapping some fine wire around the rivet, but that method is an art to itself. You have to have just right so that you reduce the wobble of the truck, while allowing the truck to turn left to right freely. I've read some will also use a washer to reduce the space inside the rivet mounting. This too is an art to itself and will require some experimenting on every situation to get the right thickness of washer so it reduces the wobble while allowing the truck to turn left to right freely.