Pure eye candy! All that Frisco motive power is awesome and that track work must be smooth as butter. Thanks for that.
In case I haven't told you lately--I like your work. Is that really a BN emblem on that bridge? Larry
Hi John, We have had some 80+ car trains but we try to keep the trains under 40ft in length, so they fit in all the staging tracks and such. The longest departure track holds around 60 cars, but if a train has to pick up a track in say Quanah then they can get to the 75-80 car range, this is usually restricted to EB trains to stay off the 2 1/2 WB grade. If we went DP or swing help, I see no reason why we couldn't pull 100 car trains. Thanks everyone for the nice words and comments.
If anyone makes it out around Grand Junction, Tom's layout is a must-see. The pictures are great but just don't do it justice.
That was amazing! I can only plan and wait to have enough room for 80 car trains!! Now a silly question from the peanut gallery, with that many cars and some good grades and curves , do you have to give new operators a shake down class? Don't give it too much throttle here and here, if stopped at x don't pull too hard on a start. I figure with that many cars you could recreate some interesting reactions that I have only seen in real life.
Great video and good trackwork. No rocking cars, smooth running and even a caboose. Even after all these years, it still disturbs me to see freight trains with no caboose.
Yes we have engineers who are qualified over the MRR work with unfamiliar engineers for a while till, they get comfortable running trains. If you get stopped on the grades you just apply enough throttle to get the train moving being very careful not to jerk stuff around. Just as the real ones you amps drop as you begin to move, and voltage increases. On the prototype here we have to have 15 loads on the head end, we actually try to do that here, and all cars get weighted (that can be) to at least 2 times NMRA specs, KD metal couplers and metal wheels. The newer flat cars that are cast metal are great and we can run empty flats and bulkheads behind 15 cars with no issues. We also try to keep it under 35 axles of power on the H/E. We had some bad string-line issues in the beginning but since we have figured out how to build trains that will operate OK. #8 switches on the MT and nothing under 48" radius on the MT too with most being 54+", all MT curves have easements, nincompoop loop is 72" radius. We are really lucky, as sometimes we will go an entire op session with no derailments. Great questions
Great answer! I figured you would have to have some form of " training " to assist new runners. My least favorite train I ever ran in real life had five mty flats head out and tonnage on the tail. 9,000 tons and 6500 feet IIRC. Cussed that thing and the people that built it for 8 out of 8 hours It's good to see that even in model form that people can see why real railroads have restrictions like that.
The worst I ever had was a block of empty autoracks on the headend, behind them was 50 loaded tanks full of fertilizer. After the 1st run in/run out I stretched braked all the way home, of course, the road foreman called the next day "for excessive air brake applications of 15lbs. or more in throttle setting 3 or above"... Roger
Yeah we can't do that except with a " mixed consist" like what we have on the old ic . With three bags ( to get the axle count CN wants) I can stretch brake the hell out of it ! Had a student swipe 8 to 8 with a coal train, I braced and asked " do you know what you did wrong?" He looked at me funny until we got kicked in the tookus!! Then my favorite line for students " what did we learn?"
Ooooohhhhh yea. Just had a train with 59 cushion coil loads on the rear w 3, dash9's on the HE w 15 loads, and 2 on the rear, like a city block of slack just on the rear 1/2 of the train, very difficult train to handle on very undulating territory, so I put the RE in power and the HE in dynamic and away we go, it did OK. LOL Of course when you get on the 2.5-3.0% grade you better have all the pups a'pushin, or your gonna make some scrap iron
Those slinky trains are the worst, they're starting to send some our way out of Galesburg via mighty transcon. Wish they would keep them down on the Frisco where they belong. Roger