incline for trolley

[billgiannelli]

I was wondering would a trolley be able to take a steeper incline?
thanks
Bill

[billgiannelli]

What I meant to say was can a trolley take a sharper incline than say a locomotive with cars.
Bill

[jward]

yes, they should be able to. our streetcar lines in Pittsburgh routinely used grades of 6% or more to climb the hills. since all a trolley has to do is pull itself up the grades, you can make them as steep as 10-15% without losing adhesion (assuming all wheels are geared)

just be sure to allow for a gradual transition to the steeper grades.

[billgiannelli]

Thank you very much for the info!
Bill

[ebtnut]

Jward:  Just out of curiosity, do you know what the maximum grade was on the Fineview line?  I've always heard it was REALLY steep, but I don't recall an actual grade percentage quoted. 

[jward]

unfortunately I do not, but I do know the grade in the mt Washington tunnel is 6%, and the Allentown line used as a bypass around the tunnel is even steeper in places.

[J3a-614]

I seem to recall the Fineview line had a maximum grade of 13%!  This was so steep, and there were places where the right of way was so narrow, buses couldn't run on it, and it was abandoned instead of converted. 

There were plenty of other trolley lines in the Pittsburgh area that go up and down like anything.  One person I knew said the Pittsburg line, even as it is today, is the equal of any ride at Kennywood amusement park!  She also said the Washington, DC Metro was almost as much fun,but not quite! 

I suspect she would have placed the Metro a bit lower if she'd ridden the Fineview line.

The steepest adhesion railroad in the world is another trolley line in Portugal, which like Fineveiw has a section of 13%.  The second steepest is Cass Scenic Railroad in West Virginia, a former logging line operated with geared engines; the prorotypes for Bachmann's Shay and three-truck Climax are both there.  This road hits 11% in two places--but one of them was 13% prior to about 1970!

One thing you may find interesting in running on such steep grades is that coming down can have its own problems.  In models, with our necessarily larger (proportional) tolerances in our mechanisms, it's not uncomon to get "bucking."  What happens here is as a locomotive with a train starts downhill, it starts to accelerate, eventually going just a bit faster than the speed the motor is running at.  At this point the tolerances or slack in the gearing runs out, and for a moment the locomotive is free wheeling.  It then accelerates enough that the slack in the gears "runs in," the gears now trying to turn the motor.  We know our models don't coast very well, and speed slows dramatically, until the locomotive slows down enough to where the process repeats itself.  It'll do this again and again on the downhill run. 

Short of working brakes on our cars, and really good tolerances in our mechanisms that would make our models more expensive than they are, I don't think there's much to be done.  Some brass models had a gearbox that would freewheel, but the fellows who had those found they had other problems, such as not engaging when you wanted them to, and also becoming free wheeling on down grades.  Nice and smooth, but you can imagine the speeds that would develop!

[J3a-614]

Best advice I can give Bill Giannelli would be to take a piece of board and some track and mock up the grade he would want to try and see how his car would work on it uphill and down.  That will give him some idea of how things would work and how they would look.

By the way, I've tested my own Bachmann Shay on 8%.  As you would expect, it went up OK, but the load it could handle dropped considerably (as it would on the prototype), and it exhibited the bucking, too.  A friend of mine said that was to be expected as well, as he thought 8% was quite extreme!  But he models the Nickel Plate across Ohio, and that's pretty flat by comparison!

[Steve Magee]

Slightly off-topic, and definitely off-scale, but my On30 2-6-6-2 shoves 6 unloaded skeleton log bunks up an 8% grade on my Lumber Mountain RR. Admittedly, with the aid of a helping of Bullfrog Snot on one set of drivers on the rear engine. :-)

Pic of it in operation can be found on the photos page of the local regions NMRA layout tour pages. Only with 3 cars in these pics, but I have since expanded to 5:

http://www.nmra.org.au/Layout_Tours/Magee/index.html

Steve Magee
Newcastle NSW Aust

[Jhanecker2]

NICE WORK  &  Good  Photographs  . J2.

[billgiannelli]

thank you all for the help and information!
Steve Magee, what a fantastic layout thanks for sharing!
Bill

[electrical whiz kid]

J-3a;
Too bad it isn't so easy to get and install a centrifugal clutch (like was used in the old (?) dial phones.  What this would act like is, the faster you rev the motor, the farther out the dogs span, to finally hit the flywheel-you get the idea.  I think a few guys messed around with the idea in the "olden days".

RIch C.

[J3a-614]

J-3a;
Too bad it isn't so easy to get and install a centrifugal clutch (like was used in the old (?) dial phones.  What this would act like is, the faster you rev the motor, the farther out the dogs span, to finally hit the flywheel-you get the idea.  I think a few guys messed around with the idea in the "olden days".

RIch C.

You reminded me--Hobbytown of Boston (now long out of business) used to sell such a device specifically for HO diesels.  

Here is a recent listing for a mechanism incorporating one at E-Bay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HO-Hobbytown-CENTRIFUGAL-CLUTCH-POWER-CONVERSION-Kit-Model-27608C-/371463599155?hash=item567cf4b433

Some commentary on these devices:

http://dieseldetailer.proboards.com/thread/14109/hobbytown-centrifugal-clutch

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/10692.aspx

http://www.lchr.org/a/26/7e/arts/xmpl/hbtwn.html

And here is a diagram of the beastie, courtesy of HO Seeker:

http://hoseeker.net/hobbytown/hobbytown44Kcentrifugalclutch.jpg

http://hoseeker.net/otherhotrains3.html

[J3a-614]

I have a strange brain.  Someone says something, or I  think of something, and something else pops into it.  Some sort of association thing, I guess.

Anyway, this Hobbytown clutch bit reminded me of a conversation with an older model railroad hobbyist who recalled how well Hobbytown mechanisms could pull. 

Hobbytown sold a variety of conversions for other models, including Athearn GP-7s.  One of the features of these mechanisms was a large flywheel that essentially filled the cab area--no cab interiors with these mechanisms!

My acquaintance recalled that at least one wise guy painted a spiral stripe on the outside of the flywheel--think of something like a barber pole.  Of course this was visible through the cab windows, and the effect could only be described as psychadelic!

Well, it was the 1970s. . .