All --
Perhaps there need to be definitions of two of the terms that many of us have
been using... So I will provide them, and then I will comment.
Slack action -- This is what happens when a locomotive (a real 1:1 one) bunches
up the slack in a long train in order to get it moving one car at a time. Then
it pulls forward at a very slow speed, taking out the slack one car at a time,
and therefore pulling first only one car, then two, then three, and so forth.
When I was a lad near the NYC's West Shore Line, there were water columns
nearby, and many 100-car freight trains stopped for water. They used the
bunching-up process to resume their runs. You could hear the
bang-bang-bang-... for a full minute, and a quarter mile away, as the slack was
taken up, one car at a time.
Accordion action -- I believe what many modelers complain about re the 802/808
couplers is the longitudinal bobbing of the rear end of the train because of
the centering-spring properties of the 802/808. This phenomenon causes the
caboose to vary in speed from slow to fast to slow even as the locomotive
proceeds at a uniform speed.
Some of you have pointed out that stiffer centering springs will eliminate this
phenomenon. This is true, but it will also prevent slack action, which I
dearly love. I get a kick out of slowly starting a bunched-up train and
hearing the click-click-click as each car's slack is successively eliminated.
I must point out that using the knuckle spring as a softer centering spring (as
I do) ALSO eliminates accordioning. Basically, the softer springs remain
compressed as the train moves forward because the rolling friction of the cars
more than offsets the springs' compression forces. So my cabooses move at the
same uniform speed as their locomotives.
Dick Karnes
Modeling the Great Northeast in the Great Northwest
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