Sunday morning, before anyone arrived, Mike and I had noted John Miller's comment (on the website here) about "car issues" on the C&NE here.

Over the last couple of years, since the C&NE had got operating I had noticed that cars that derailed (on perfectly good track), on looking at the underside of the car, all had commercial "resistance axles".   I just replaced the axles and went on.  That Sunday Mike had the sense to actually determine that the resistance wheelsets had a plastic axle (and now, after years, very hard) and then measure the wheels back-to-back distance.   Lo, some of these resistance axles were out-of-parallel (back to back) by several millimeters!

That got us to look at other plastic axle wheelsets.  Up until about 2011 I was installing Proto2000 wheelsets, but had seen some of them derail as well.  Out of gage.... I have a bucket of these wheelsets that have been removed.  Mike measured some that were still on cars, and lo! some of these were also seriously "out-of-parallel" (back to back).

Later, that morning the group was talking about this, in our post-breakfast discussions.  Andy rolled one of the wheelsets across the table and it was easy to see the wheelset wobbling.   No wonder it derailed.

I also have Kadee wheelsets from, what? the late 1980s/early 1990s.   I have not had these kind of issues with Kadees. (I just don't like how the coating gets on the rails.  So I am not installing anymore.)

For the past 5 years I have been installing Intermountain wheelsets (and just got another 400 sets this past week).   My initial reluctance about the Intermountains had been the metal axle and what happens to the dcc if there is a derailment (by running through a switch - something I am good at).   Experience here is that this is a "make believe" worry.   So I am on campaign to replace all Proto2000s (and the hundreds of resistance axles) with Intermountains.

              Jim