didja never play with a frenz train set and see the how the bogeys travelled over points ? I spent hours fascinated by this. Put two points to gether and the bogey goes wibbly wobbly woo - and derails
loved doing that ( to someone else's trains )
and the guard rails prevent this from happening in the real world
on a straight rail a bogey will do simple harmonic motion - as the rails and the wheels dont fit exactly together
bit problem when they were designing the pendolino I recall
( but I am not a rail engineer )