How do you figure out the pulling power of a locomotive? The locomotive that I want to know it's pulling power is the Joshua Lionel Cowen Series Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-6 Allegheny locomotive. I know if the cars are made of plastic, more could be pulled versus if the cars are diecast. The cars that I plan on using are Lionel C&O diecast hoppers. Can the pulling power of a locomotive be increased? Sorry for all the questions, but have really enjoyed getting into O gauge railroading.
I have a Lionel Big Boy and have never found the limit of what it could pull.
I would estimate one like you have could pull 100 of the lightweight cars on level ground, with no curves, without any trouble. If you have sharp curves like 0-31 the locomotive would just pull the cars off the track when going around such a sharp curve.
Even on 0-54 curves my locomotive starts to pull the cars off the track when only pulling 8 MTH 70' passenger cars.
The way I figure that out is I just keep adding little by little till 1 the engine starts to strain or 2 it starts to spin its wheels when starting now as said above a lot depends on how light the cars are and how wide your curves are I have O-54 on my shelf layout with 8 rail king 70' cars with no problem I also have scale boxcar right behind the engines ( I have 2 PA with dual motors and 2 PB non power befor the cars) so my train it self is about 22' long and I have no problem with curves or legnth but I also have 2 power units at the front so power should never be a problem but have done it one PA and one PB and its done it fine also I do it this way more as for the look .
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