Kadee P48 trucks (bogies)

[Overseer]

Having been surprised when Kadee announced that they were producing Photo 48 trucks I purchased one pair of each of four of the five recently introduced P48 trucks to see how they look, and thought some on WT would be interested to see them. The online ordering worked without problem and the package arrived quickly.

I have opened the 100 ton roller bearing trucks and the Bettendorf trucks so far. Comparing the 100 ton trucks with the Protocraft version of the same design, to check whether they can be used in proximity without looking silly, was a priority. With the results below. I think they would look ok on vehicles within a train. The Kadee rotating bearing caps are a bit big but otherwise the trucks look remarkably similar. The thin functional springs on the Protocraft trucks always look a bit odd to me so the Kadees are better in that regard. The compensation works fine but doesn't have the silkiness of the sprung trucks. The Kadee wheels surprised me in that the flanges are narrower than scale, I would expect Kadee would want to keep the flanges of the die cast wheels as thick as possible, but apparently not. The overall width of the wheels is to scale and there seems to be no problem operating on scale track.






I mounted the Bettendorf trucks on an Atlas Trainman boxcar to see how the provided adapters work. The answer is very well with no modification. The Atlas trucks are very ugly so even for O gauge fitting the Kadee trucks would be a substantial improvement, but probably not worth it on a Trainman car as they are quite chunky anyway, I think too heavily detailed to really be usable for P48.



Overall, very good.

 

[Jordan]

Wot no tie plates on your track??!! :; even I've got those, as a crude '0W5' modeller who accepts Atlas trucks as okay!!
But back to the Kadee trucks - I think they are really good too & in my case they fill a need for a decent replacement for Weaver plastic trucks. Now my Weaver cars have rotating bearing caps as well as my Atlas ones (and MTH cars with Atlas trucks).
I have only had to adjust the back-to-backs on one set of them to suit my track, whereas I have had to adjust all my Atlas trucks.
The blackening on the Kadee trucks can be a bit inconsistent, & the fact it's on the wheel treads is a bit of a pain, but nothing a brass brush in a rotary tool can't deal with - something I do before installing them. So far I haven't done any further painting or weathering on them - a round tuit job.
To me the bearing caps look better than on Atlas trucks (obviously, perhaps!!) but I'm also surprised how chunky they look on those Protocraft trucks - to me those look closer to Atlas.
I've found that some cars get a distinct wobble after fitting Kadee trucks - particularly a couple of Atlas Trainman cars as it happens. Not a wobble when rolling, but that annoying wobble when stationary & they get bumped or while uncoupling. I have yet to investigate how to dampen or eliminate this issue.
But overall yes I'm happy with them too - with a lot of my Weaver cars the Kadee trucks under them cost rather more than the car itself!!

 

[Overseer]

Wot no tie plates on your track??!! :; even I've got those, as a crude '0W5' modeller who accepts Atlas trucks as okay!!

No tie plates on these sidings. Slow speed dead end sidings in the middle of nowhere, well maybe Saskatchewan which is another way of saying middle of nowhere. Actually it is just my number 5 turnout test track to make sure stock runs through sharp curves.
Some of the Atlas roller bearing trucks look ok just not the plain bearing ones supplied with the Trainman boxcars.