Necessity to evenly distribute wheel wear on HO trucks

I learned how railroads tend to turn their equipment (Amtrak in particular) and especially in the corridor because one of the major purposes is to evenly distribute wheel ware on their equipment.

How much of a necessity is there to do this on model trains?

I have only turned a few trucks around or wheels as needed. Overall I haven't really found a reason to do so yet.

I can't imagine the need for this at all. Maybe after about thirty or fourty years *perhaps* on yoru locomotives because they are heavier. The amount of force and friction is far less than in the real world conditions create.

I think there is a need to turn HO wheels--not because of uneven wear, but because of warped castings. Have had that happen a few times and it causes cars to wobble. I've never seen any actual wear on HO wheels, though.

I work part-time in a hobby shop. The locomotives and cars on the display layouts in our store run for months on end, 7 days a week. The motors give up the ghost long before any problems with wheelsets are observed. Come to think of it, I've never observed a problem with wheelsets, and some of those cars have been running for years.


rls

I helped my LHS set up a small figure 8 in a "children's activity center" (temporary pokey) in a local mall. The tight radius and grades had some interesting effects. An Athearn B-B diesel pulled four frieght cars six hours a day up and down and around.

At the time the LHS was still using "Brite Boy" to clean track. The wheels on the loco aquired deep grooves in the treads in less than a week. We replaced the loco with a Proto and the results were better but still "groovy".

I used a 5x magnafier on the track and found it looked like a file, long grooves from the abrasive block and all the grooves were filled with dirt. All that dirt made the train run bad, made the users clean the track more often, a vicious circle. LHS finally took my advice about only cleaning track with solvent and soft cloth pad upon seeing the proof of BBoy's damage.

Extreme case, yes. Proof positive (to me anyway) cleaning track by grinding the surface is not a good idea. I've been a "TV Tuner Cleaner" advocate ever since I found it was the best thing to maintain the old steel E-Z Track. It was the only thing that worked in my high humidity basement. It cleans and adds conductiviy without destroying the surface of the rail.