My engine can only pull 2 cars up hill, it sound like the wheels are spinning with more cars. Any thoughts. Can I use 2 engines?
What kind of engine do you have and how steep is your hill?
It's the SanteFe EMD FT engine. I have an oval and I have an 18 piece graduated tressel it starts just fine at the first two tressels then bogs down at the 3/4"-1' tressel and spins, well at least I think it is spinning it sounds that way?
DC or DCC?
Regardless, it sounds like you are missing the traction tires.
I'm pretty sure it's DC, but there are traction tires? I thought the wheels have to be metal for the electricity. They are in fact all metal
Your layout is too steep for what your are trying to pull . Just because you can build it does not mean it will work with every type of equipment . If you are trying to move passenger cars up more than a two percent grade your not going to have much luck . Proto-type railroad used multiple engines to do that successfully and rarely tried to lay track greater than 2% over long distances . J2.
Thank you. I will adjust accordingly.
About traction tires:
At least one of your drivers will look like a car wheel without the tire. A rubber band goes in the lip on that wheel and the rest pick up the electricity.
Ohhh thank you I'll look again!!
The Bachmann FT hasn't used traction tires in many years. As a matter of fact, traction tires on one of these is a good sign there is a cheap pancake motor drive inside that only powers one truck. I stay away from those. What you have is a much, much better engine.
I agree with the others, your grade is way too steep. The Bachmann trestle set has been calculated to give a grade of between 5 and 6 percent. I don't have figures for those grades, but I do know that on a 4 percent grade your locomotive will pull about 1/6 what it will on level track. Your grade is steeper, so your pulling power is even less.
Jeffrey - Thanks for clearing that up. I wondered about the traction tires but I don't have any FT's now so I didn't know.
Thank you everyone for the help! I did notice we didn't have a a wheel on the engine that has a spot for a traction tire,
We have cut down the trestles so it is much lower and less of a grade, probably half as much as it was and the train is working great pulling up to 5 cars up the grade.
Thanks again.
Do a little math and measure the slope of your grade, height divided by distance. 2" high in 100 " traveled is a 2 percent grade, considered very steep on the prototype. I bet yours is a lot steeper.
Saluda grade on the old Southern Railway in North Carolina was around 4 percent and was considered a bottleneck. There were runaway sidings at the bottom of the grade with piles of sand at the end. The mainline was always aligned to divert a runaway into the siding unless the engineer signaled a switch tender by whistle that he had the downgrade train under control, at which time the switch tender would line him for the main.
The steepest grade I remember on a standard US railroad was 5.89 percent on the Pennsylvania Railroad on Madison Hill in Indiana, long abandoned now. On grades like that, the engine always was on the downhill side to forestall a runaway from a parted train.