That Was the Wrong Decision or I Shouldn’t Have Done That!

This weekend, with my Operating Session fast approaching, I decided to start relocating my trains back to their start positions for the start of the timetable session.  Everything was going smoothly, when upon relocating my NL1 – Brisbane Limited, I made the decision to start swapping out a number of Lima sleepers for the much better looking Auscsion Brisbane Limited sleeper coaches.  After all - that is why I purchased the Brisbane Limited add on pack.  I had my trusty train consist list and decided to start with just a single LAN and a DAN coach from my recent purchases.  My train had left South Brisbane Interstate platform and had made its way to Park Road, when I decided to swap out the two sleepers.  The train made its way successfully down the long incline from Dutton Park, past Loco Pilly, through Clapham Yard and then through Acacia Ridge Yard.  It was all OK until I got to Glenapp Loop.  I had my first derailment.  I thought the bogies may have been too tight.  Upon further investigation, the wheels were all out of gauge.  That was fixed and the train made it through Glenapp, and then at The Risk, it derailed again on the southern point.  The train then made it to Running Creek and then it just kept derailing again.  I got it past there and then it made it to Cougal Spiral and then derailed again in about 4 places.  After traversing through Cougal Spiral, it derailed on the Upper Richmond Creek Bridge at Kyogle.  It then had issues just past Fairy Hill Loop outside Ron and Marg’s B&B.  At that point I decided to swap the two Auscision coaches out and put the old Lima ones back in.  The Lima ones never had issues.

Upon further investigation, it seems that the bogies do not have any torsional movement.  The coaches have huge pins from the body, through the bogies and this prevents the torsional movement of the bogie as the train traverses the track.  For the record, my track has no flat sections in it.  Everywhere there is a grade of 0.5% or up to 2%.  I have lots of curves, hopefully none less than 900mm radius on the mainline.  Where possible there is slight super-elevation.  So where ever there is change in cant and gradient on the track, the new sleepers derail. 

So now the Brisbane Limited is back with old Lima coaches while I do some work to the new Auscision coaches. Apart from that serious issue, I ran all the other trains except from 4 trains back to their start positions and no other issues were uncovered.  The track ran well after a long time of no running.  I will run the last 4 trains early this week if I shout myself an early mark.  I have decided to make a number of wording changes to some of my timetable cards as some of the rollingstock is replaced and upgraded with newer wagons.  I have lengthened one small train by another wagon.  I have activated another siding on the layout.  I suppose it was stupid to have it if I didn't use it.

So a huge number of hours was lost this weekend just trying to work out what the issues were with the passenger train.  Were they track related, gauge related, were there kinks in the track, were there sharp changes in gradient etc.?  There was one certain area that was the result of a less than steady change in gradient.  This will be improved over the next week before the next Operating Session.  But all my other wagons in all the other trains were able to get through these sections of track.  So I think this all comes back to a bad design of bogie pin in the Auscision coaches.  Hopefully the RUB cars will not be the same design.