My layout has a few steep grades (25 degrees ) and locomotives strain to climb grade.Will DCC help give more power to locomotives so that it will maintain speed.
For a short answer, no. And yes. With DCC you could have helpers pushing on the rear and cut off when not needed.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
No, DCC will not give your locomotive more power, but it is much easier to double or triple head engines and/or use mid-train or rear end helpers using DCC.
trainguyu2My layout has a few steep grades (25 degrees ) and locomotives strain to climb grade.
Are your grades really 25 degree? The tangent value for a 25 degree angle is about 0.466. The tangent of an angle is defined as the side opposite the angle divided by the side adjacent to the angle or rise divided by the run. If we assume that the run is 100 inches and solve for the rise, then the equation is rise divided by 100 inches equals 0.466. The rise works out to be 46. This is also the slope.
Seems pretty steep to me. Are you modelling a cog railway?
trainguyu2My layout has a few steep grades (25 degrees ) and locomotives strain to climb grade. Will DCC help give more power to locomotives so that it will maintain speed.
Another note is that most real trains don't maintain speed going up grade, they slow down. On the joint line out of Denver the trains will rocket along at 55-70mph until they hit the monument grade (about 2.2%) where they slow to 20-40mph.
How much a DC locomotive slows down, depends on the quality of the DC throttle. Really cheap ones will slow down much more than a really good electronic one. On the other hand there are DCC decoders that have a built in circuit called EMF. It is the purpose of this circuit to maintain motor speed (hence locomotive speed) and do what you are asking.