25 cars + caboose sound about right for one GP-38?

[on30gn15]

Our first official open house for our fairly new "Boonslick Area Model RR Club" here in Missouri was a success. After the public left I took a notion to see what the Chessie System GP-38 would do in the number of cars pulled.
Loco is the DC version.

Putting together all the cars Kathy and I had brought made a train of 23 cars 40ft & 2 cars 50ft, of assorted brands, plus a Bachmann Chessie caboose.
Train length in real feet was just more than 4x four foot modules, 16ft
Which is longer than our entire shelf layout at home!

Loco seemed quite capable of pulling that train on level track for as long as we cared to feed it juice.
"Railfannned" for about half an hour chilling out watching it make laps.

How does that compare to what that HO loco would be generally expected to handle?

Not sure if this 30 second clip has all 25 cars or not, it took a bit to round up all our cars and some got added as they were located.

My Chessie meeting Mike's MoPac heritage unit running light
http://s196.photobucket.com/albums/aa309/FSW4picts/Boonslick%20Area%20Model%20Railroad%20club/videos/?action=view&current=MVI_8996.mp4

And somewhere in the middle of the open house we managed to get swapped from running right hand main to running wrong main, eh, so what 

[blwfish]

Many of the new releases can pull about 50% more than that (35+), but it doesn't sound like you had enough rolling stock to find out just how much your GP-38 could pull. The thing that I'd be more concerned about is how much they can pull on grades - there aren't many of us who have big enough layouts to be running trains much longer than 20 feet long.

[on30gn15]

Many of the new releases can pull about 50% more than that (35+),

Would not have thought to even try 35 cars.

but it doesn't sound like you had enough rolling stock to find out just how much your GP-38 could pull.

There  were more cars there counting other members' cars but for whatever reason I wanted to use just our cars.

Sure would be fun, and Mike sure could use the sale's profit margin to put toward bills and groceries, be fun to have the cash to lay down on our itty-bitty LHS's counter and say I'll take a WM GP-38, another Chessie System GP-38, and 50 hopper cars.   

[Doneldon]

On30-

That's a real impressive train you put together there, and your loco doesn't appear to
struggle at all with the tonnage. It's moving at a good clip and didn't seem to slow as
it moved through the curve. Thank you for showing your video.
                                                                                                         -- D

[on30gn15]

Welcome, but I can't take any credit for the loco's behavior, all I did was buy it from Mike: whatever the loco does is Bachmann's fault   

[jamesjr43026]

Hello every one I just found this message board and thought I would start getting educated on model trains.  Me and my 2 kids just started playing with my old trains from the 70's again.  The old engines I have can only pull 3 to 5 cars.  I do not have any dcc equipment will any Bachmann  GP-38 engine do for pulling that kind of load?  I think I saw on ebay 60 to 120 dollars when I searched gp-38.  The cars and engines I have are all HO.

Thanks

James

[Jim Banner]

jamesjr43026,

Many of the train sets in that era had diesel locomotives with only 4 drive wheels.  The other four wheels picked up power from the rails.  They would often pull only the number of cars that were in the set.

A similar looking locomotive made today will typically have all 8 wheels driving and all 8 picking up power.  It will also have more weight.  With today's freer rolling cars, 40 or even 50 cars is not out of the question.  The number can be reduced by many things from from dirt in the wheel bearings to dirty wheel treads to grades.  A 4% grade (a 4" rise in 100" length of track is 4%) could reduce that to 6 to 8 cars.  Cars in "average" condition with a bit of dirt on the wheels and in the bearings running on about flat track could be around 25 to 30 cars.

On my own layout, I have pulled 40 car trains of hand picked cars up my 3' diameter helix with its almost 4% grade.  But I had to use 4 locomotives working together to do it.  Doing stunts like this are fun from time to time but on most home layouts, it looks ridiculous to have the caboose still in one town while the locomotives are well into the next town.  But I never let details get in the way of fun.

Jim

[on30gn15]

A 4% grade (a 4" rise in 100" length of track is 4%) could reduce that to 6 to 8 cars.

It would do that to the real thing too.
Railroads tried to avoid grades like avoiding the plague.

[blwfish]

... my old trains from the 70's again.  The old engines I have can only pull 3 to 5 cars.

They probably aren't in top condition, then. I have a number of engines from that era, and all of them will pull at least 10+ cars on level track, even the least of them.  Most of mine weren't anything to write home about, either - they were $15 locomotives (Tyco, early Bachmann, etc) or at best Athearn blue boxes. If the motor and gears aren't lubricated, or in good alignment, or the track is dirty, or the cars are heavier than normal, or have dried-up lubrication gunk on them, or some combination of these, it's easy to imagine that the train size would drop precipitously.

More than likely an hour or so of diligent maintainance would get them in much better operating condition.

[jamesjr43026]

Thanks for the information.  I will look thru the old post about cleaning and lubricating trains.  I still have the itch to run 20 feet of train track in the basement.