Skarloey Pulling Power

[Mike1121]

Hello Everyone!

I'm hoping to get some feedback from everyone regarding the pulling power of Skarloey.

Does anyone else notice that his pulling power is not all that impressive and struggles with certain loads? I recently got some of the narrow guage coaches from the newely released batch, and he can barely pull 2 of them on a level surface and the second there's any kind of incline he simply stops.
Peter Sam can pull 4 of the coaches perfectly fine on an incline, but Skarloey is useless. It's really frustrating I can't have him pull coaches.

Is Skarloey that weak, or could there be something up with the coaches creating a lot of drag? I use Bachmann EZ track and have their N scale tier system as my incline as a reference.

Thanks for your input everyone!

[J70Toby]

I haven't bought the ready-to-run narrow gauge coaches, but I have brass models of the Tallylyn coaches built as their RWS counterparts.  Two tends to be Skarloey's max unless he's double heading while Rheneas can manage the entire train.  I have Peter Sam but haven't run him yet.  As far as I can tell, it has to do with Skarloey's short wheel base giving him poor traction.  I've looked into products that might improve his traction but haven't committed to making any modifications yet.

I'm in the process of building my first actual layout that isn't just a loop nailed to a board and won't have a place to run trains until it's done, so I can't give any advice on what might help at the moment.  But I don't think it's just your Skarloey that has poor hauling power.

[GlennockGoblin]

Yeah, I have the same problem with my Skarloey. I am building a layout of the Skarloey Railway using a Woodland Scenics "Scenic Ridge" baseboard that my local used train store gave away for free. I found that whenever Skarloey gets to any incline with a load, I have to turn up my control to max speed in order for him to get up. Because of this thread I got Peter Sam, and he does work a lot better on hills. However he is a lot more sensitive to debris on track. At least I know where to clean it now.