Please help with weights for my passenger cars

[mmagliaro]

With relative ease, I got about 12g of weight into mine in all the big cavities in the frame in some unused space in
the fuel tank area.   (Of course, you probably have the speaker and decoder in those cavities).

That gets it so it can pull a 7-car train up the grade.  It's up to 94g, which is a pretty good weight for an engine,
but no match for the 124g old F unit.   Nope.  I think some rubber feet will be the only way to go.

To get any more weight in there would require milling out chunks of the frame and replacing them
with tungsten, but I'm not up to getting that involved in this at the moment.

[nkalanaga]

If you power the generator car, then wiring the cars together, as Bob and I have suggested, makes even more sense.  As he said, the consist remains the same, so you'd have enough pickup wheels that the power car shouldn't ever stall.  As long as the diesel had good contact I can't see the push-pull operation being a problem.

[craigolio1]

Craig, you may want to consider removing any weights that the cars already have in them.
I've found that the unweighted cars preform better than with the stock weights in, not to mention it allows the engine to pull a more prototypical-length train.


-Cody F.

That would be worth experimenting with.  Would there not be the danger that the train would straight line in the helix?  Better put a pillow under it.

[craigolio1]

Since it's obvious that either the engine needs mo' weight, or traction tires, or both, and the cars need to lose weight...but they're lit...it would seem to be time to do a bit of research and install a lighting circuit that runs off a battery or has a capacitor to take care of the "blinky-blinky" of lit cars which rely strictly on track power for their lighting.

Since the passenger consist remains the same in the run, positioning the circuit and maybe the battery (if you go that route rather than capacitor) in the power car and connecting the lights in the rest of the consist with connectors between cars would not be a difficult thang to do.

However, the FIRST thing to do is to get the train moving...that's the very first priority.  Doing some experimentation would pretty quickly tell you if there's enough weight to remove in the train.  It may be that no matter what you do, (other than powering the power car) you can't do it without losing a couple of cars.  But, that's just a guess.

Peteski,  the cars are equipped with capacitors so there is no flicker.  Remove the power and they stay lit for about 3 seconds before fading.  I think it was you that gave me the circuit.

In my experience, traction tires add tremendously to a loco's pulling power, so Bullfrog Snot would be the very first option to try.

Just sayin'....

[craigolio1]

I probably have some of the grooved wheel sets from when I replaced them with tireless wheels in my RS-3s. (same mechanism as Japanese RS-11)
But I'm not sure if those are compatible with the Chinese version of those trucks.

As far as replicating the prototypical operation goes, did the 1:1 loco pulled the 9-car consist up a constantly curved 1.7% grade? 

on the frame
I would appreciate any wheel sets that you guys are willing to share.  This loco is a new design.  It has a split chassis and needle point half axles.  I made a mistake.  It's an Atlas chassis under it.  Says so right on the frame.

[craigolio1]

I would consider wiring the train together.  I could put some simple connectors in the diaphragm space.  It would have crazy good electrical pick up.

The Kato 11-10# chassis is perfect.  It just needs to be lengthened a bit.  There is another chassis by Tomytech, I think, and it would need no lengthening.  It uses a small motor for each truck with nothing but weight in between.  I both cases though I would have issues with coupler clearance.  Both models have truck mounted couplers which would make the distance between cars like 15 ft.  The trucks on the box car are so close to the ends, there would be no space for the coupler with the power trucks there.  My only option would be to move the trucks closer to the center in order to fit a Z scale coupler.  Thats not out of the question.  The over all effect of the train would be more impressive with all nine cars and a shorter wheelbase power car, vs a shorter train.

I'll try to find some time to get the 11-107 chassis I have into the power car and see how it turns out.

Thanks for all of the input.

Craig

[robert3985]

I would consider wiring the train together.  I could put some simple connectors in the diaphragm space.  It would have crazy good electrical pick up.

The Kato 11-10# chassis is perfect.  It just needs to be lengthened a bit.  There is another chassis by Tomytech, I think, and it would need no lengthening.  It uses a small motor for each truck with nothing but weight in between.  I both cases though I would have issues with coupler clearance.  Both models have truck mounted couplers which would make the distance between cars like 15 ft.  The trucks on the box car are so close to the ends, there would be no space for the coupler with the power trucks there.  My only option would be to move the trucks closer to the center in order to fit a Z scale coupler.  Thats not out of the question.  The over all effect of the train would be more impressive with all nine cars and a shorter wheelbase power car, vs a shorter train.

I'll try to find some time to get the 11-107 chassis I have into the power car and see how it turns out.

Thanks for all of the input.

Craig

Craig,

I don't think there's a need to actually build the powered power car yet.  You should just put a locomotive in place of it in your consist (preferably one that has the right chassis, and see how they operate together both with the engine on the front, then the engine on the back.  See of you can get them to speed match good enough for your operation. 

The worst case scenario would be that the cars won't stay on the track when the power car and the engine are on either end of the train going down grade.  I don't think there's going to be a problem with them both on the same end of the train going up grade.

A trick that has worked for several model railroaders who run helper districts on their layouts with pushers is to de-power one truck in the helper.  That works going uphill, but I don't think I've ever heard of somebody wanting a helper in a train going down.  Sort of the same principle however which amounts to the helper pushing half the train and the primary motive power dragging the other half.  Going downhill, it would seem that just the opposite would hold true...the primary engine braking for half the train, and the helper braking for the other half.

Hmmmmm....I think there's got to be some experimentation to get it right, even with DCC to speed match.

Good luck!  It's a very interesting puzzle

[160pennsy]

I would consider wiring the train together.  I could put some simple connectors in the diaphragm space.  It would have crazy good electrical pick up.

The Kato 11-10# chassis is perfect.  It just needs to be lengthened a bit.  There is another chassis by Tomytech, I think, and it would need no lengthening.  It uses a small motor for each truck with nothing but weight in between.  I both cases though I would have issues with coupler clearance.  Both models have truck mounted couplers which would make the distance between cars like 15 ft.  The trucks on the box car are so close to the ends, there would be no space for the coupler with the power trucks there.  My only option would be to move the trucks closer to the center in order to fit a Z scale coupler.  Thats not out of the question.  The over all effect of the train would be more impressive with all nine cars and a shorter wheelbase power car, vs a shorter train.

I'll try to find some time to get the 11-107 chassis I have into the power car and see how it turns out.

Thanks for all of the input.

Craig

You might want to consider using one of the Randgust power express boxcar kits:

http://www.randgust.com/prod04.htm

[craigolio1]

I like your idea Bob.  It requires me doing nothing until I have track to run it on!

Craig

[craigolio1]

But seriously, it is a good idea.  Find a loco that does a good job of assisting and then find a to fit it into one of the cars in the train.   A Kato RDC, or other longer power chassis, could work under one of the passenger cars as well.

Craig

[peteski]

Peteski,  the cars are equipped with capacitors so there is no flicker.  Remove the power and they stay lit for about 3 seconds before fading.  I think it was you that gave me the circuit.

Yes, I was the one.  But I suspect that with no weight in them at all, the pickup will be so poor that even with that circuit you'll see some flicker. Maybe if you wired those cars together, pickup would be good enough, even with light cars.

[craigolio1]

Can you recommend a small connector I could use that is really easy to pull apart?

Oh and great circuit by the way.  It looks sweet.  The lights in the domes have major hot spots but I don't care.  It's because of the spacing and I'm ok with that.

Thanks very much.

Craig

[peteski]

Can you recommend a small connector I could use that is really easy to pull apart?

Oh and great circuit by the way.  It looks sweet.  The lights in the domes have major hot spots but I don't care.  It's because of the spacing and I'm ok with that.

Thanks very much.

Craig

I "roll my own" small connectors using 0.050" pin spacing male and female headers.  Digikey part numbers (for single row version) is ED8250-ND and ED8450-ND.  I can cut those into connectors with as many pins as I need. Then I cut off most of the pins on the end to be soldered, then I solder wirres to those shortened pins.  I then usually create a strain relief by globing some 5-minute epoxy on on the side where the wires are soldered. These really work well and are very small (sorry, I have no photos handy).  When interconnecting cars, you could glue the female side under the end of one car, and have the male side dangling from the end of the other car.

[VonRyan]

That would be worth experimenting with.  Would there not be the danger that the train would straight line in the helix?  Better put a pillow under it.

With stock Kato wheelsets, I'd say the risk is naught as long as your helix turns aren't an overly tight radius.


-Cody F.

[nkalanaga]

I've made connectors for MUing locos (before flywheels) from 0.015 brass rod and 1/32 brass tube, bought from Special Shapes.  Not fancy, but you solder one wire to the rod, the other to the tube, kink the rod a little so it stays in, and plug them together.  Using very fine, flexible, stranded wire, a pair of them would fit in the loco pilots, one on each side of the coupler, and didn't look bad.

I also used a pair between two passenger cars, to put a battery in one for a light circuit in the other, and that combination took 18 inch radius curves with no trouble.  I had body mounted couplers, in two Con-Cor smoothside cars, and put the connectors under the floor, flanking the couplers.  Each car had a socket on one side and a wire on the other, so if I'd done an entire train, they could have been reordered if I wished. 

For couplers on the pusher, how about an old Unimate body-mount on the end that couples to the train?  You've already said that they'll stay coupled, so manual uncoupling would be acceptable, and the Unimate mounted with a screw through the shank.  Using the hole closest to the coupler provides a very short mount.  Where you'd find one today I have no idea, but someone here may have a spare.