General Discussion (Model Railroader)

rrinker:

1. Weight - with more plastics and less die-cast, a lot of today's locos aren;t as heavy as the old ones. This obviously hurts tractive effort.

Randy

Hi Randy,

 Don't forget the material manufacturers have to use these days too. The days of zamac, bronze or lead boiler castings is LONG over. Thanks to the EPA and a general increase in the awareness of pollutants they have to use FAR lighter metal in models. That has a HUGE bearing on pulling ability.

So it's really our elected officials that are to blame. If you'd like to see better pulling model trains and lead tainted water, please complain to them, not the model manufacturers!

 

Margaritaman:

Sir Madog:

...or was everything really better in the past? 

The older I get, the better I was.

My thoughts exactly!  "The good old days that never were and are no more....."  Can't say that I miss the old locos (still have quite a few) even though they could pull a lot of cars, first you had to get them to run more a a foot at a time before they stalled and had to be helped along by the 0-5-0 "helper".........

A little extra weight goes a long way to improving pulling power. Personally I love my PK2 0-6-0 yard goat.  It can pull 15 40' cars out onto the yard lead where it will start to slip......  That said If I use that many cars behind her, I have to foul the main to be able to switch so I stick with 8 to 10 cars max. But it is still the smoothest runner I have and will crawl very slow when needed. 

orsonroy:

[Thanks to the EPA and a general increase in the awareness of pollutants they have to use FAR lighter metal in models. That has a HUGE bearing on pulling ability.

So it's really our elected officials that are to blame. If you'd like to see better pulling model trains and lead tainted water, please complain to them, not the model manufacturers!

 

... I would not want to put my signature under this statement - most of the stuff that populates our layouts is made in China and they don´t care at all  about their or our environment. The main reason is cost. Plastic is much cheaper and a pattern for plastic parts also.

TA462:

The P2K 0-6-0 and 0-8-0's just aren't very good pullers.  I've got a few of them and mine all had a 10 car limit.  Any more and the wheels would slip, that is until I discovered Bullfrog Snot.  I bought a bottle of it just out of curiosity and it actually works.  My little 0-8-0's can easily pull 20 cars now.  I think thats a lot for such a tiny switcher.

 

I was jsut thinking about Bullfrog snot when I read the original post. I've ehard so many good reviews of it, I think it would get those locos pulling like crazy.

Ya needs ta hit them purty plated wheels with a good ol' fashioned abbrasive pad and give'm a bit of a tooth to grab the rails with, sure them wheels dont look quite as purty with a satin finish vs the stock shiny finish, but whadda want, purty or workin'

BTW you CAN always pull them light engine weights and recast them in lead or white metal its not that hard

wjstix:

tstage:

Keep in mind, fellas, that prototype 0-6-0 and 0-8-0 switchers weren't meant to pull 12- or 20-car cuts.  They were meant to pull shorter 2 - 4-cars at a time in a yard.  So, you are asking it to do something it was not designed for.

I have to disagree there. I'm an iron ore modeller, I've learned that in the steam age the ore mining companies regularly used 0-6-0's to push 8-10 loaded ore cars out of the open pit mines, often at a 2% or greater grade. Obviously, they could pull/push more on level track. 0-8-0's were used in mining and in ore dock operation, moving 20-30 loaded ore cars at a time up to the docks.

On regular freight railroads, 0-8-0's were often used in transfer service, pulling long cuts of cars on level ground between rail yards.

 

Hi Stix,

Where are you getting this information, because I don't think it's correct. Ten loaded iron ore hoppers weigh 2.1 million pounds (1050 tons). That's a lot of weight for any engine to lug up a 2% grade, and FAR too much for just about any 0-6-0 ever made.

As a comparison, a USRA 0-6-0 has a TE of 38,350 pounds. A typical USRA light Mike has a TE of 54,700. A USRA light Mike could haul about TEN loaded boxcars up a 2% grade (as proven by 4501 in the 1960s). Loaded boxcars don't weigh as much as loaded ore cars.

An 0-8-0 hauling 30 loaded ore cars? That's 6.3 million pounds. It took the N&W THREE Y-3a's to move 5.5 million pounds up a 1.5% grade, so you may want to check your sources.

 

cv_acr:

tstage:

Keep in mind, fellas, that prototype 0-6-0 and 0-8-0 switchers weren't meant to pull 12- or 20-car cuts.  They were meant to pull shorter 2 - 4-cars at a time in a yard.  So, you are asking it to do something it was not designed for.

I also have to disagree here. If you're only moving 2 or 3 cars at a time, you're doing a horrible job of switching the yard. Ideally you want to pull a whole track and sort it, which could easily be a 20+ cut, but on level ground and slow speed. A switch engine needs to be able to move cuts in a yard, but has no need to bring them up to any sort of speed on a mainline.

Steam switchers almost NEVER moved more than eight cars at a time in yards. Why? Simple: this is the days before radios and before (believe it or not) everyone wore glasses (I'm talking the 1950s here folks). Train crews physically couldn't SEE each other past eight cars or so, so they couldn't communicate with each other effectively (hand signals only).

The idea that a switcher, especially a steam switcher, should be able to grab an entire train and wrestle it around to switch them as one long cut is model railroader fantasy, as are steam-era yards with long drill tracks. Ask steam-era yard crews how they REALLY did things, and look for long yard lead tracks on 1930s/1940s era yard diagrams, and you'll get a MUCH more realistic picture of how things were done in the good old days.

 

My second ever purchase of a steam engine model was of the P2K Heritage 0-6-0.  No matter how you slice it, it is a wonderful little engine.  The detail set the standard at the time for all but brass engines.  It still ranks right up there for non-brass RTR steamers.

I was initially disappointed in its pulling power, but what did I know?   My second engine, perhaps three months into the hobby, and I had nothing with which to compare it.  Now I know that I expected too much from that widdo beastie.  Then, one day, I decided to see what it could do on level track.  I hooked up three Walthers heavyweights to it and an IHC smooth side Budd car, plus a head-end reefer from Walthers.  It had no difficulty at all on the level, but as soon as the second car had been shoved onto the transition into my grade, it began to spin.

I suspect that a small 0-6-0 in the 1920's, non-superheated, would have generated near 20-25K lbs of tractive effort.  Larger ones superheated probably rivalled large Consolidations at the time, and were closer to 30-35K lbs of tractive effort.  I don't profess to know, but I would not be surprised to see such engines in a level yard switching 15-25 boxcars at a time.  I haven't tried yet, but on my level yard tracks I would not be surprised to see my 0-6-0 jerk 10-15 around without too much difficulty.  And yet, with this tiny engine, adding even 0.5% of a grade into the effort and you will have trouble with 6-8 boxcars.

-Crandell

oldline1:

So..........maybe we haven't progressed as far as we think with all the new and improved engines available today. I mean the USRA and the Dec are beautiful engines but if they can't pull then what good are they really?

As an engineer on a class 1 you would be hard pressed to have a modern road switcher [GP 40-2] pull more than 15-20 loaded cars [coal,steel,grain,ore] up a significant grade. I can't compare or contrast what an old steam switcher would be able to pull but I don't think an 0-6-0 would come close to the adhesive traction of the newer diesels. One of the yards I worked had a signifcant grade and we would not switch cuts greater than 12-14 cars not only because that was the upper limit of pulling ability, but because of safety concerns; In railroading it is more important to stop on a downhill than it is to be able to pull up a hill!!! As for the P2K 0-6-0, I think the're a nifty little engine switching 6-8 cars at a time. Mine runs like a swiss watch at super slow speeds and I've never had issues with it [soundtraxx TSU-750 w/2 1.1" speakers crammed in the tender]

orsonroy:

rrinker:

1. Weight - with more plastics and less die-cast, a lot of today's locos aren;t as heavy as the old ones. This obviously hurts tractive effort.

Randy

Hi Randy,

 Don't forget the material manufacturers have to use these days too. The days of zamac, bronze or lead boiler castings is LONG over. Thanks to the EPA and a general increase in the awareness of pollutants they have to use FAR lighter metal in models. That has a HUGE bearing on pulling ability.

So it's really our elected officials that are to blame. If you'd like to see better pulling model trains and lead tainted water, please complain to them, not the model manufacturers!

That's a very interesting perspective. 

How about instead of complaining to them, go out and vote for the representative that best represents your thoughts and beliefs. 

"Sir, before I vote I'd like to know...are you a model railroader?"

Sir Madog:

The car I drive is a 15 year old Mercedes. It does not have any of the frills that you get today - no ESP, no A/C, no adjustable steering column, no power seats, no nothing. It is a plain old piece of machinery, well engineered and built like a tank, that does exactly what I want it to do  - perform!

Huh. Wonder what it means then when my 17 year old pontiac had most of those things until the fan assembly gave out. Still built like a tank, runs great, and I get good mileage. Good sound system, I think a speaker's about to go out though.

Ray, I don't have the books in front of me, but my sources would be "One Man's Locomotives" by Vernon Smith, a railroader who started as a Mesabi Range iron ore co. fireman/engineer in the 1920's and retired as head of motive power for the Belt Ry. of Chicago, and "Lake Superior Iron Ore Railroads" by Patrick Dorin. I guess you could throw in "Locomotives of the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range" by Frank King, who retired as a executive of the DMIR and was the son of a DMIR engineer.

The Dorin book shows a GN 0-8-0 in the 1930's pushing (IIRC) 28 loaded ore cars out onto the ore dock at Allouez. Keep in mind your weights (210000 lbs per car) are a little high, I believe a loaded WW2-era ore car weighed 70 tons, earlier steel ones (which were still in use into the fifties) were I think 50 tons...so a 30 car cut wouldn't be as much as you estimate.

 

I regeared and remotored to a can mine, used it on the club layout yard 20 cars at a time. Its all metal. I like the fact my PCM Y6b is all metal also it should crawl long strings of hoppers up grades.

 

I have also noticed that the newer locos don't pull like the old ones do. Now when I was a kid a had an old GP 9 that I still have that was purchased in the very early 80's and even now that thing will pull like nobody's business. Even after thoroughly cleaning the wheels and contacts it will not run smooth.

 The new Athearn locos that I have are A) much more detailed B) are not affected by dirt on the wheels and contatcs like the old ones and C) generally run smoother but lack the traction to pull as many cars.

Now I run a layout that has tight turn (space constraints) and about 20 to 25 cars. So when one loco starts slipping no worries I just put another loco in front and away we go.

 

Will

 

Modeling in HO scale modern day diesels

orsonroy:

cv_acr:

tstage:

Keep in mind, fellas, that prototype 0-6-0 and 0-8-0 switchers weren't meant to pull 12- or 20-car cuts.  They were meant to pull shorter 2 - 4-cars at a time in a yard.  So, you are asking it to do something it was not designed for.

I also have to disagree here. If you're only moving 2 or 3 cars at a time, you're doing a horrible job of switching the yard. Ideally you want to pull a whole track and sort it, which could easily be a 20+ cut, but on level ground and slow speed. A switch engine needs to be able to move cuts in a yard, but has no need to bring them up to any sort of speed on a mainline.

Steam switchers almost NEVER moved more than eight cars at a time in yards. Why? Simple: this is the days before radios and before (believe it or not) everyone wore glasses (I'm talking the 1950s here folks). Train crews physically couldn't SEE each other past eight cars or so, so they couldn't communicate with each other effectively (hand signals only).

The idea that a switcher, especially a steam switcher, should be able to grab an entire train and wrestle it around to switch them as one long cut is model railroader fantasy, as are steam-era yards with long drill tracks. Ask steam-era yard crews how they REALLY did things, and look for long yard lead tracks on 1930s/1940s era yard diagrams, and you'll get a MUCH more realistic picture of how things were done in the good old days.

 

 

Actually the 0-6-0s and 0-8-0s could pull 30-40 cars easily.These was made to classify cars and build trains not play.

As far as no radios..

On the PRR(1966) we would switch long cut of cars using hand signals..We would relay the signal back to the engineer.

 You see the old railroad men was railroaders that got the job done without the modern conveniences and without much fanfair..

A good engineer could wrangle more drawbar just by using the throttle and sander.