02-26-2012, 01:53 PM
jwb Wrote:Regarding Kadee axles, it depends on which products and what time of day. The Kadee wheelsets you buy off the rack at the hobby shop have the metal wheels and the axle ends molded as one piece, joined by a plastic center axle piece, so what touches the journal is in fact metal.
That's interesting to learn. Almost all of my passenger cars (mostly modified Rivarossi) have Kadee wheelsets. When I decided to polish the wheel treads, a few of them "got away" from the wire wheel in my Dremel, resulting in melted axle ends.
I should point out that these are not recently-purchased, so perhaps that change was made for the benefit of dummies like me. 
What was surprising was that the engineering plastic used for the axle melted before the relatively soft plastic used for the sideframes. 
New wheelsets in those same sideframes roll perfectly well.Wayne