How about some power railroading here!!

Enough of this little itty bitty stuff, let's talk about some raw power here. There has been a lot of talk about train lengths and coupler strengths and all that stuff here and in the Yahoo Z group, so I got a wild hair going and decided to do some testing on the under-construction Trinimosa Branch.

Two sets of two Micro-Trains F7's

2% grades with 18", 21" and 24" radius curves including a 21" radius 300 degree loop with a 2% grade.

One pair pulled 54 cars before it stopped dead in full wheel slip on a 2% grade, the other pair pulled 55 cars around the layout with a little bit of power to spare. The consist included four Full Throttle two bays, four FT Center Flows, three Penzee Reefers, eight Penzee three bays, the rest mixed MT cars including a few tankers, 20-25 or so 40' and 50' boxes, a few 50' gons some with loads, a BH flat with load ,a few PS-2 hoppers, a 40' flat with a boiler and an MT caboose.

Just for S&G's, I hooked up a third F7 and 10 more cars; no worries, no problems, could have hooked up another 10 or so I believe. There were no broken couplers and only one unscheduled uncoupling on the 65 car train, and that was a on a section of straight, flat track, go figure. A couple of derailments caused by cars picking the points on those evil, miserable Marklin switches, and those only on the 55 and 65 car trains. This is with cars pretty much right out of the box; I haven't gone through and checked the coupler heights or filed down the mold imperfections on the knuckles. Actually, the whole thing ran pretty smoothly, all things considered. Now, you had to actually drive the train, not easy with that silly Marklin white power pack which is all I have hooked up right now, and judiciously feed some throttle to keep the train moving up the grades, but otherwise it was a piece of cake.

The length of the 55 car train was 12'8", the length of the 65 car train was 14'4" both of which are ridiculous on a 15 foot long layout, so this sort of thing will not happen again, unless I get another wild hair and decide to test some GP's. I am guestimating the weight of the 55 car train at about 1.33 pounds. I thought about hooking up a fishing scale and trying to pull the train along with it to estimate the actual tractive effort the F7's were generating, but I thought that might be pushing my luck a bit.

So what do I conclude from this? The MT couplers are strong enough to handle whatever I can throw at them, seem to hold on to each other pretty darned well, at least on my layout, and the cars stay on the track well enough considering they weigh only about 9 grams or so on average. If the new Bowser couplers are as strong and work as well as the MT's, there will be no problems with most of us, I would think.

I took some video of my Frankentrain experiment, but my cinematography is strictly Blair Witch Project stuff and it is in Quicktime which is what my little Aiptek can do and I have to figure out how to load it on the EeeuuTube, but I will see if I can do that in the next couple of weeks.

Something to think about if you think about these sorts of things...

Todd

Todd,

What is that saying?.....the proof is in the pudding. You sure proved any nay sayers about what a pair of F7s and MTL couplers can and can't do.

Yes, run that test again with a pair of Geeps and other motive power you may have sitting around there idling.

Your test is valid and should be carefully considered by those wondering aloud.
Loren

Todd, Good on ya for the testing. See if you can do the test with a couple of GP35's. Most of the long train runners seem to be train show module guys. They don't frequent this site much, too bad, it would be interesting to hear what they have to say. I've heard their comments and seen the 50 car trains. They all looked good until a car uncoupled and they run over to fix it before they freak out. I can't blame them for this. You're at the train show trying to impress the public with your scale and bingo, uncoupling. I guess if they/we're really interested in possibly eliminating this uncoupling in 99% of the cases AZL or Bowser is the way to go. We'll see. It is a daunting task to change out 50+ pieces of rolling stock. I have about 25 and will do some, but some of these guys have hundreds of cars. Time will tell. Cheers, Jim CCRR

I have cars with MTL couplers only, and run them on train shows. They un-couple only, when I'm laZy to check and adjust them. Otherwise, they hold on all weekend long.

Lajos:)

For those who said you cant do switching on z scale.

Right on Schmoo,

Anyone who thinks you can't switch in Z needs to think again. I started this experiment at 30 cars. I added five cars at a time like this: I loaded five cars onto a yard track with a rerailer, pulled the train into the yard lead, unhooked the locs over an under-track uncoupler mag, pushed the train back past the yard throat, went and got the five cars in the yard, hooked them onto the consist, then pulled the train through the yard lead and onto the mainline for the test. And I did that four more times up to a 50 car train when it just got too darned long to work with in my yard.

If you ain't switchin', you' ain't trying, so no whining about how you can't have realistic operations in Z scale.

Todd
Todd

I wasn't try to do any science but I pulled a 107 car train with 3 SD70's. It was a mixed AZL bethgon / Pennzee hopper unit train. I took a video but I haven't posted it anywhere. I regularly pull 50 car trains without problems.

More power railroading again, this time with GP's. Used the GP9's as my 35's are not run in as well. Same layout, same mix of cars.

Two GP's - 33 cars and that was spinning like crazy and nursing them hard up that 2% hill.

Three GP's - 43 cars and no more, tried 44, not happening.

I think these beauts have the power, they just don't have the weight. How do I know this? The only way I could get these babies up the grade and around the layout without having to take the train apart or back them all the way down was to put a little bit of "finger weight" on em to get em moving. Didn't take much finger pressure, just a touch, which leads me to believe that a little bit more weight would do some good here.

So, the question is, has anyone added weight to a MT GP and if you did, where did you add it, and how did the motor do with it? This isn't a problem for me as 25 cars would be about the limit I would ever run on the layout, since that is about the size that the yard and the sidings can handle, but it is an interesting question.

Gotta tell you, those three GP's and 43 cars looked pretty darned cool though...

Todd

Todd,

More great test results. I'm sure this will help others determine operating limits.

Jerry