Some of you may remember my topic about this loco right after Christmas where I didn't remove the foam insert under the trailing truck and it could barely pull three cars. Once I removed it, it worked fine.
I have track on two pieces of Homasote where I run trains until my room in the basement is finished. I have 55 cars that normally needs three diesels to pull. These are not just 40' cars, they're modern, mostly 50' cars, some cars have loads. I was showing someone the train this weekend. I took the diesels off and ran the N&W J back and forth a little then decided to try to couple onto the train. I did not expect it to pull them but it did. And it didn't even seem to struggle (except for a curve that's a little too sharp.) I was amazed. Why can't they make diesels that pull this well?