Monday, August 11, 2014

The Long Train

An S Scale craftsman modeler on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines Historical Society forum sent pictures of running a 73 car train. So naturally, I was curious how long a train I could run. Out came the freight cars!

Although I have a 3 scale mile mainline run, almost half of it has 2 - 2.2% grades (it is still basically a flat southern New Jersey railroad) so I could only try to move the long train on the flat portion of my layout. Two 180 degree 19" radius turns and some S curves complicated matters.

My four PRSL GP38s were able to pull 90 freight cars (28' long) through the flatlands the first time. They did some spinning and managed to polish both their wheels and the rail.

After manually helping the train over the grades, I tried to run a second loop but was only able to move 85 cars the second time (polished rails/wheels?).

I then tested to see how many cars the engines could move up the steep portion unassisted. Results:
     4 Atlas GP38s: 38 cars
     3 Atlas GP38s: 28 cars
     2 Atlas GP38s: 18 cars
     1 Atlas GP38s:   8 cars  ???

Now who is going to help me put all those freight cars away?










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