starting a garden railway

[Anonymous]

I'm planning on building a garden railway by starting with a Bachmann trainset, my question is: How strong are these steam engines, how many cars will it pull ?

Bert

[tmcc man]

Hello bert, and welcome to the forum. I would recommend using a different type of track, such as LGB or Aristo Craft, and get the widest curves possible. I will be starting mine in the spring, and I will most likely use Aristo Craft stainless steel track. To answer your question., I think 10-15 cars. I am not too sure about that, because so far I only have LGB, and Aristo.

[simisal]

Hi Bert;
I started a layout using a Bachmann trainset. I was told the company is very good about waranty work on their equipment. I did use Aristo track in the yard. The Bachmann track is okay inside but will not hod up outside. The power supply that comes with the set would probably work, but I bought the Crest Train Engineer to use outside.
simisal

[ttrigg]

QUOTE: Originally posted by woopud

I'm planning on building a garden railway by starting with a Bachmann trainset, my question is: How strong are these steam engines, how many cars will it pull ?

Bert

[#welcome][#welcome][#welcome][#welcome]

Bert

In order to properly answer your questions you need to fill in a few more variables.
(1) Will you be pulling "full size" cars, or "trainset size" cars?
(2) What grade will your track be laid at?
(3) What will be the minimum radius for your curves?
(4) What type engine do you have?

All of these variable play a big roll in how many cars you engine can handle. Just how strong is the engine? They vary from brand to brand, and from size/type to size/type. If your layout is not perfectly flat, that will impact on how many cars you can pull, the smaller the diameter of your curves, the fewer cars to be pulled. You should be able to get away with around a dozen cars everything depending.

[bman36]

Hi Bert,
Welcome to the forum. The others here have you off to a great start. There are a lot of topics here on getting started. Our moderator has a thread for beginners at the top of this forum. Check it out. Great bunch here so enjoy the forum. Later eh...Brian.

[cacole]

Since you didn't say what Bachmann engine you are considering, answering your question about pulling power is rather complicated, but maybe this information will help.

I have 3 Bachmann Spectrum 1:20.3 scale steam engines that I run on 12 Volt rechargeable batteries and CVP Products' AirWire900 Wireless DCC system, which limits the applied maximum voltage to the motors to around 11 Volts.

With the 2-8-0 Consolidation I have pulled a boxcar containing a 4 pound battery, 4 AMS cattle cars, and a caboose up a 50-foot long, one percent grade with no wheel slip. The engine slows slightly going up the grade, so I just increase the throttle slightly and it chugs right on up. I use ball bearing wheelsets or ball bearing races in the journals on everything, though, which lightens the load on the engine considerably.

A 2-6-0 Mogul pulls 4 old-time heavyweight passenger cars up the same grade with the same results. With this train, the Baggage/RPO contains the same weight in batteries.

My newest addition is a 2-truck Shay. I don't know how much it can pull because I haven't coupled it to a very long train, but suspect that it will outpull the Consolidation.

Except for possible wheel slip under a heavy enough load, a trainset locomotive should pull more than my engines because your power pack will have a maximum output of 16 Volts or more. The theme of my back yard empire is narrow gauge railroading, so everything is supposed to run slow.

[Tom The Brat]

You likely have the 4-6-0 "Annie" Anniversary Edition. It's very reliable and a good worker. To be sure, count wheels and look on the bottom for a rubber plug just behind the rear drive wheels and a little hump under the rear drive wheels to clear a gear.

There are lots of things to determine how many cars a loco can pull, but it will handily deal with everything I own except the Chevy.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cacole

With the 2-8-0 Consolidation I have pulled a boxcar containing a 4 pound battery, 4 AMS cattle cars...

How did you adapt the Bachmann locomotive coupler to the AMS cars? My Consolidation's coupler is more than a full coupler's thickness below my AMS couplers. I have messed around with removing the top plate on the Bachmann coupler to raise it but that only brought it up to about 1/3 of the couplers joining and they won't hold together for very long.

Thanks,
Bill

[markperr]

I seem to remember George Schreyer doing a traction test on a Bachmann Shay and it was capable of pulling around 27 cars on a level grade. At the time of the test, the only thing that came close was an Aristo SD-45

Mark