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AggroJones : stated and Asked Mind boggling. The Lionel Challenger. How can a locomotive that weighs 31 oz be such a weak puller? Is it the plating on the drivers? Can the plating be worn off? Are the pony and/or trailing trucks taking weight off the drivers? Can anyone with this steamer anwser these questions? The following tip on the Lionel Challenger is copied from Tony'sTrains page and it very good if you want to improve the Lionel engine. Check out the tender weight, about 1.25 lbs. That is equal to quite a few cars with the brakes on if you don't lubricate the tender wheels. It might answer some of your questions. Thanks to Tone's Trains and Bob Liberman for this information. This article below is under Lionel Challenger Tweaking Thanks to Bob Liberman for more details on Tweaking Lionel Challenger. I received my Lionel Union Pacific Challenger, took it out of the box, put it on my program track and put it on the railroad! This locomotive weights 2lb’s and to my amazement the tender weights 1.25lb’s. I ran the locomotive on my railroad as a caboose hop for a shake down run. Here is what I noticed about this run. The speed was just a little fast for my taste. The whistle had a little too much reverb, and not enough base. (UP Challenger & Big Boys had very low base saturated steam whistles) The locomotive chuff was a little bit too tinny and a little bit too loud for my ears. I returned to my largest yard and backed up to a 25-car train for the second part of my test, pulling power. The train left the yard and ran pretty well, with a 2lb locomotive I did not expect much trouble with 25 3.5 oz cars. The steepest grade on my layout 2.5% and it is 35 feet long and has a 40 deg radius curve on it. About half way up the hill the Challenger stalled to my amazement, I backed the train down the grade and took the locomotive to the shop. In the Shop First thing I did was to remove the heavy spring from the pilot truck. Second I removed the tender shell and took out the weight from the back of the tender. I oiled all of the tender axles and all the axles on the locomotive. I removed the sound unit and took off the bar that holds the speakers and slid the speakers back far enough to insert a small amount of cotton in the bottom of speaker box to soften the chuff and add some base to the whistle. Reassembled the tender and prepared for my second attack of the hill. Test #2 attack on the hill, this time the train went to the top of the hill with out spinning a driver and it now will pull 32 cars up the grade. The detail on this locomotive is amazing and the fidelity to the prototype is wonderful and this locomotive will fit in the scope of my railroad. If you need a UP challenger for your railroad this is a great locomotive.
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