Peter and George bring up an interesting point regarding pulling power
of various engines. Obviously a rubber tired driver will pull more cars
especially on grades. My layout has a lot of ups and downs and arounds
sometimes all at the same time! My personal opinion is that it's many
times the balance of an engine that will help with it's pulling
ability. I have two engines that have trouble pulling what I think
they should (interestingly the real world engines had the same problems
to a large degree). One is the Overland Pacific and the second being a
Southwind Atlantic. The Pacific is in charge of pulling a 3-5 car
passenger train made up of Kinsman wooden cars (some with American
Models trucks) which is not a heavy train, but the engine will stall
with five cars. The 4-4-2 will only reliably handle one, so it doesn't
run on the layout. That same engine will pull a decent length train on
our flat modules (similar to the flat lands the real thing ran on).
However a Ominicon 2-8-0, and the SHS engines will handle this very
same train quite well. Even a Rex Mogul does quite well. Now I do
understand that a 2-8-0 will have more wheels on the rails but the
overall weight of the Overland engine exceeds the weight of the Ominicon
(haven't weighted the SHS engine yet). I believe the Ominicon, SHS and
some of my other engines apply equal weight per driver on the rails
allowing it better traction.
When it comes to model diesels, I have been very happy with the
pulling power of the plastic and the brass engines (all without any
traction wheels) and I handle many 20+ car trains. Hey it's fun to
double head both steam and diesel and with DCC it's very easy!
Bob Werre
Peter Gagnon wrote:
> Folks,
>
> It was pointed out to me, off list, that my previous post could be
> read to imply that the new SHS Consolidation will slip on a flat when
> pulling about ten cars. First let me apologize for that
> misunderstanding. My reply to George did not state that I was pulling
> up a 3% grade, and it probably should have. I intended to make no
> statement about how many cars the engine will pull on the flat. My
> layout is small but crooked (reflects the ethics of the management, I
> suppose) and doesn't have enough flat to fit ten cars into.
>
> Rather, as George had said that his AM GP-9 has been pushing 10 to 12
> cars up a 3% grade, I intended to indicate that my Pacific would do
> the same as the Geep -- meaning the same performance up a similar
> grade. I apologize if my not explicitly restating the grade has led to
> confusion. I was attempting to do apples to apples with respect to the
> grade in order to show the contrast between the pulling power of the
> traction tire equipped engines and those not so equpped.
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
