EMD Model 40 by Roundhouse

[alcofanschdy]

Does anyone have any experince with this loco?  I borrowed my friends to try on a micro switching layout I have and it either hesitated or stalled out on the turnouts.  I have Atlas code 100 track with the standard turnouts both right and left.  Are there certain turnouts that this little loco will go thru or is this an on going problem.  If it is I won't consider buying on which is too bad as it seems to run smooth and is kinda cool.

Bruce 

[Railphotog]

Any and all small four-wheeled engines with very little weight in them wil stall on tunouts, it's just a fact of life.  Their wheels are too close together to maintain continuous electrical contact, so at some point it is lost and they stall.   Either go faster through the turnouts or pair two of them together so one is always in a powered section.

 

 

[WP 3020]

Yea, the two biggest problems with locos with only four wheels is electrical pickup and weight. While adding more weight might help a little, there are still only four small points of electrical contact. Even if the design of the mechanism allows the wheels or axles independent movement up and down it often isn't enough to make it through a turnout. Irregularities in track work (dips, bumps and gaps) or the gap of a turnout frog are often enough to cause one or two wheels to lift off the rail (dropping the points of contact down to two or even one). Some people have added rail wipers for more electrical pickup. I've seen modelers pairing two together, like Railphotog suggested, with either a draw bar, dummy couplers. If you are going to pair two up, I would suggest also to go one step further by connecting them electrically by adding jumper wires.

[7j43k]

I've got some #10 switches on my layout.  Some of them had insulated metal frogs (DCC friendly, I believe).  The insulated section was 2 1/4" long--much longer than the 40's total wheelbase.  I have ended up powering ALL my frogs (and running jumpers to the points rails, too).  It's a bunch of work, but the rewards are huge.  If you do it, it'll help keep some of your bigger locos from stalling too.

 

Ed 

[carknocker1]

I too borrowed one and had the same problem , I was wondering if you could add a capacitor behind the pick ups to keep it powered past the switch points ?

[fiatfan]

There is another alternative.  I semi-permanently coupled two of the critters together to avoid exactly this problem.  Works great for me.

Here's the thread describing how I did it.

http://cs.trains.com/forums/1311504/ShowPost.aspx 

Tom 

[Heartland Division CB&Q]

Here's the assignment for my EMD 40.

It shuttles the quench car (I'm substituting a Difco dump car for one) at the coke ovens.

It's smooth running little engine and this is a good application for it.

[NSlover92]

I use all code 100 shinohara turnouts with metel electro-frogs, look better then atlas and preform great, but are hard to get a hold of because they are always out of stock. Mike