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Thoughts on slow speed performance
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Good smooth slow speed operation is a mark of quality in locomotives. You want to be able to start a train from rest slowly enough to see the slack come out of the couplers and then the entire train slowly creep forward and then smoothly gather speed. That's cool. Running the throttle up to nearly full speed and have the train jump from stopped to 60 mph with a jerk spoils the illusion and causes gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. <br /> Gear reduction helps, and more is better. There are some physical limitations on the common "one-gear" schemes. On a steamer your gear ratio is 1:Nteeth on driver spur gear. "1" comes from the worm gear and you can't do better than that. The number of teeth on the spur gear is limited by the diameter of the spur gear, which can't be bigger than the drivers lest it hit the rails going thru a turnout. Without going to a second gear set that is all she wrote. <br /> I have a Mantua Pacific which had pretty good slow speed operation in stock trim, slowest running speed was about 4 scale mph. I put the can motor conversion kit 812 into it and the slowest speed went way way down to 0.1 scale mph. Since the gearing didn't change, the improvement must come from the increased torque of the can motor over the stock open frame motor. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />comm
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