HO Freight Car Truck Axle Lengths


Vera Mills
 

Hello,
Having exhausted my HO freight car trucks with metal wheels, I now have a need to purchase replacement wheel sets.
Trucks in my spares box requiring metal axles and wheels are as follows:
Accurail 100
Athearn 90400
C&BT Shops equivalent to Walthers 1001/1012
Intermountain pre-war A3
Roundhouse 2923
Train-Miniature/Walthers 1001/1012.
I realise that the situation is more difficult with the demise of Reboxx but any suggestions of a source for both code 88 and 110 wheels would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Regards,
Glen Mills


Brian Carlson
 

Glen. 
Intermountain wheels are around 1.015 axle length. Tangent and arrowhead are about the same. Exxactrail code 88 are 1.002 but I’ve not used them. 

Some might work in those trucks you have. Alternatively you can upgrade the trucks to those by Tahoe model works, tangent, rapido and others where appropriate. 

Brian J. Carlson 

On Jul 5, 2021, at 10:14 PM, Vera Mills <gleng20.mills@...> wrote:

Hello,
Having exhausted my HO freight car trucks with metal wheels, I now have a need to purchase replacement wheel sets.
Trucks in my spares box requiring metal axles and wheels are as follows:
Accurail 100
Athearn 90400
C&BT Shops equivalent to Walthers 1001/1012
Intermountain pre-war A3
Roundhouse 2923
Train-Miniature/Walthers 1001/1012.
I realise that the situation is more difficult with the demise of Reboxx but any suggestions of a source for both code 88 and 110 wheels would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Regards,
Glen Mills


Mark Rossiter
 

Glen, about the time REBOXX faded from the model railroad supply chain, I decided to quit using a lot of the various factory supplied trucks, unless they were really specific to that car (such as the PRR trucks on Bowser cars)  This included a lot of the sprung trucks I originally wanted to change over to code 88 tread widths.  With the help of the members on this forum, I was converted to the idea that the sprung sideframe feature was not all that helpful and in fact became a real annoyance when one or more of the springs went missing somehow. 

 

I now standardize on Accurail and Tahoe Model Works trucks for nearly everything, with the few appropriate trucks that aren’t available from those manufacturers being supplied by Bowser, Kadee HGV and a few select others.  Having said that, I tend to leave the trucks on Rapido, Tangent and some Exact Rail models alone as they are generally of very high quality and readily accept semi-scale wheelsets from Intermountain and Tangent Scale models.  While many Atlas trucks are highly detailed, they are the most problematic in obtaining semi-scale wheelsets for as the factory supplied axles are considerably shorter than anyone else’s on the market.  As a result, many of them get replaced with one of the other manufacturer’s trucks mentioned previously.  The same is true of Kato trucks. 

 

Mark Rossiter         

 


Jay Styron
 

Glen,
Bowser axles are a bit longer than most others. I keep some of their wheelsets around for situations where others have too much play.
-Jay Styron


Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...>
 

Accurail trucks are SUPPOSED to work with axles up to and including 1.015" long, but that is the max, unless you twirl "the Tool" in the journals and make the cone break out of the sides of the boxes a tiny bit. The general move to shorter axles over the years has been most gratifying, allowing for exact scale width on even 40 ton trucks, but it wasn't always that way; the NMRA RP sets the maximum length at 1.035"... zounds!

Dennis Storzek
Accurail, Inc.


Richard Townsend
 

In my youth, which was a long time ago, I loved the appearance of the AHM truck compared to the Athearn, The AHM truck sideframes seemed "sharp" while the Athearn sideframes seemed "muddy" to me. But the AHM trucks were so wide.  I would have loved to see AHM trucks much closer to scale width with shorter axles.

Richard Townsend
Lincoln City, OR


-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...>
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Sent: Tue, Jul 6, 2021 7:24 pm
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] HO Freight Car Truck Axle Lengths

Accurail trucks are SUPPOSED to work with axles up to and including 1.015" long, but that is the max, unless you twirl "the Tool" in the journals and make the cone break out of the sides of the boxes a tiny bit. The general move to shorter axles over the years has been most gratifying, allowing for exact scale width on even 40 ton trucks, but it wasn't always that way; the NMRA RP sets the maximum length at 1.035"... zounds!

Dennis Storzek
Accurail, Inc.


Raymond Stern
 

Mark,

For over 25 years I have successfully used Northwest Shortline
.088 wheel sets with 33" and 36" wheels. They come in three 
axle lengths, .944", 1.015", and 1.025". The .944" works well
in Atlas trucks.

Raymond


Ken Adams
 

I just fitted 3 sets of new Moloco .088 wheels to 3 pair of Tichy Andrews trucks and they went in with no problem and are free rolling. 
--
Ken Adams
Still in splendid Shelter In Place solitude, about half way up Walnut Creek
Owner PlasticFreightCarBuilders@groups.io


Eric Hansmann
 

Moloco notes the axle length is 1.005" on their Code 88 semi-scale wheelsets.

 

https://www.molocotrains.com/products/2088ni-pre-painted-33-inch-wheelsets-nickel-plated-insulated-and-painted-12-sets?variant=40243253674162

 

 

Eric Hansmann

Murfreesboro, TN

 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Ken Adams
Sent: Wednesday, July 7, 2021 10:34 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] HO Freight Car Truck Axle Lengths

 

I just fitted 3 sets of new Moloco .088 wheels to 3 pair of Tichy Andrews trucks and they went in with no problem and are free rolling. 
--
Ken Adams
Still in splendid Shelter In Place solitude, about half way up Walnut Creek
Owner PlasticFreightCarBuilders@groups.io