Yes, the Atlas two rail cars will have wheels with smaller flanges. The wheel faces are quite shiny. A coat of rail brown paint would help. The cars will also have Atlas couplers.

While Kadee sized, they are not as good as Kadees. There is a thread in this forum group or another I think, which shows in detail how to put Kadees on the various Atlas cars.

Ed Bommer

I run MTH scale wheeled diesels and some two rail cars on Atlas track with generally good results, and so I ordered the Trinity grain hoppers and a 50 foot box car in two rail. Especially on things like hoppers, the two rail wheels look so much better.

You should be fine with 081 curves. The issue with two rail wheels on three rail track is wider flangeways through the frogs on switches and turn outs. You may get a little dipping, or even some derailments. A fix (courtesy of George ("Soo Nut")) is to raise the height of the guardrail on #5 and 072 turnouts. It is lower than the running rail. A piece of styrene glued to the top will narrow the flangeway and keep two rail wheels on the rail. I experimented a little with the width of the plastic piece in order to find a "sweet spot" that allows two rail and three rail wheels both to pass through (since most of my equipment still has three rail wheels). The #7.5 turnouts are not a problem because the guard rail already is at rail height.

The picture below illustrates the fix before painting. One mistake I made was using white styrene. Use black because the wheels may rub off some of the paint after a while.

RM

I don't know; I'm not sure the design has changed. You should be able to see, however, whether the guardrail top is the same height as the running rail. On the 7.5s it is, but not so on the 072s and no. 5s, at least not on mine.

RM

For what it's worth, my layout is all Atlas track also. I have been unable to run 2-Rail wheeled diesel models, but have quite a few 2-Rail brass cabooses that operate fine over my Atlas switches, and I have not modified (added the shims) any of the switch frogs. I will state however, that freight rolling stock doesn't seem to like backing through the Atlas switches. I do have some VERY old 2-Rail cars/cabooses equipped with the VERY old "large flange" 2-Rail wheel sets (way before the RP25 profile) and they track much better.

Concerning couplers, I have finally removed and discarded virtually ALL of those Atlas O "Adjust-acoupler" things that used to be included in Atlas O 3-Rail freight cars. I now use only Kadee, but am still waiting to see what the "new" Atlas "scale coupler" will look like and HOW IT WILL OPERATE!

I had the same problem with atlas switches. I added the plastic to raise the guard rail. I still noticed that the Central Locomotive Works F unit would still hit the frog tip and derail. I took a dremel with an abrasive disk and beveled the frog point slightly. Now the locomotives with scale flanges have no problem going through the switches without the plastic on the guard rails. I have never had a problem with the freight cars with scale wheels.