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. . . Went Over Like A Lead Roller Coaster Car I made some lead roller coaster cars because of how easily the light little ore car was derailing in tests. But I couldn't seem to get their center of gravity low enough and they turned out to derail even worse than the ore car. So a couple of days work went down the tubes on that one. I tried making really light cars—six to be exact. They worked better than either the ore car or the lead cars so I decided to stay with these. See figures 4 and 5. Better Living Through Balsa Wood I cut them out of a piece of ½" x 2" x 3' balsa. Without the low side cuts, the wheels would rub on the bottom of the balsa block. A 3/8" x 1/16" sheet metal screw was the fastener of choice to get the truck (with the coupler cut off as in figures 4 and 5) attached to the car. Besides, the screw was the only heavy part of the car and I wanted that to be low to keep the center of gravity low. I chose metal Bachmann wheelsets because the rims are wide and the flanges deep and I wanted the cars to take sharp curves and not fly off the rail. I glued a couple of sitting people (Preiser) on the seats and had my spouse paint the six cars—she loves making scenery, building and/or scratchbuilding kits, and running trains on our train layout. I got a spool of Anchor black annealed #28 wire and bent a 42mm piece of it as shown below in order to have a way for the cars to get hoisted up the chain-hoist section of the coaster. I poked the wire into the cars as shown in figure 4. |
