Devon, somehow I am following that logic. Yup, it makes sense.
But, my railroad is a common carrier, narrow gauge railroad. The first common carrier narrow gauge railroad in the country, set in the early 20th century. So it has to comply with the Railroad Safety Appliance Act. Meaning my railroad has to use automatic couplers, and automatic brakes, on its equipment.
Nice try Devon.
Actually, new Kadees need very little force to couple, certainly less than Aristo, USAT, AML.
But get the least amount of dirt, or let the rod rust and they can take some force.
Lesson: a bit of oil when new at the pivot points will guard against this.
Even so, ball bearings can make coupling more difficult.
Passenger cars only for me…
Greg
I shy away from oiling KaDees, since KaDee says not to. I will have to consider it though.
I did get some KaDees in trade once, because they didn’t work for the guy who had them. No, they didn’t work, because he greased the heck out of the coupler gearboxes. Once I cleaned the grease out of the gearboxes, and lubed them with the dry white lubricant I have been using for years, they worked just fine.
David Maynard said:
Meaning my railroad has to use automatic couplers, and automatic brakes, on its equipment.
Excellent! Then you shouldn’t have any problem coupling up once you get all those automatic brakes modeled and working. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Joking aside, lots of good food for thought in this thread. Thanks for sharing your adventures David.
Randy, when I do add sidings, I will have to work out the brake thing. I am wondering if I can somehow have the caboose hold still, so I can cut cars in and out of the train. But that is a future, very far future, project.
David Maynard said:
Randy, when I do add sidings, I will have to work out the brake thing. I am wondering if I can somehow have the caboose hold still, so I can cut cars in and out of the train. But that is a future, very far future, project.
Adjustable working caboose brakes is something I have considered to give some drag to the train when going down grade. On my steep grade I get a lot of surging going down the hill. Up the hill the train runs great! I’ve not spent much time on working out how to do it.
For brakes on sidings, or on the main when switching on a grade I use modified Harbor Freight Pick Sets to hold the cars in place. You can see one here holding the caboose…
I’ve collected a few track spikes (1/1) over the years. Placed athwart the track on the downhill side, they make good brakes. Painted white, they can be seen, even in low light.
I stole the idea from TOC.
OK so working automatic brakes on a caboose or . . . ? I think this could be very cool. I am thinking sense most seem to use metal wheels that magnets could some how could be made to work. Small magnet that you can turn on or off that would magnetize the shoe drawing it to the wheel. The shoes beam hangers etc all out of steel that are wired to or touching the electrified magnet. Flip the switch the shoes suck up to the wheels flip it again and de-energize the magnet thereby releasing the breaks. This could be done with a simple RC switch using either track supplied power or small battery. Seems to be it should be able to work. I couldn’t see doing it to every car but certainly to cabeese or specific breaking cars, or passenger cars.
If RC is to complicated a simple switch on the car itself would work as well but would not be able to be used while in motion.
Steve, That’s a very railroady way to go about it. Nice.
Ok Ok, I wasn’t going to bring it up and derail things but since it went that way… YES, that’s exactly what I’d like to do too. There are a ton of ways to add selectable drag to a Caboose. And yes Devon, electromagnetic break shoes would be super cool way. I’ll be running my tea kettles on R/C so I just need to figure a way to mount a RX in the caboose that will also pick up signal. Don’t know if two RX’s receiving from one TX simultaneously will work or not.
If I ever get settled and build more than Robertsdale then I braking caboose or… if your EBT minded a combine, will almost be a necessity.
The thing about the magnetic breaks. Many metal wheels are non ferris. In fact, the only ones I have that I know for sure are ferris are the AML wheels on my AML boxcar. Magnets don’t stick to non ferris metals. I was thinking of either working break shoes, controlled by a lever or servo (RC), or some kind of track brake that clamps onto the wheel flanges. These are just wild ideas at this point, since that project isn’t going to happen for a long time.
I have no way of uploading photos right now as I’m back east for a bit, but I experimented with working brakes on a caboose on my dad’s railroad. I did this for the same reasons John mentions–surging on steep downgrades. Dad’s got a killer 5% on his line and many locos surge going down.
It’s an experiment that still needs some tweaking, but essentially it works by tightening a string wrapped around the axle. The tricky thing is that there’s a very fine line between drag and locked wheels. That, and the direction the string is wrapped around the axles affects how well it slows them, so there’s a difference in efficacy based on direction of travel.
What I’ve found so far with what experiments I’ve been able to do is that I can introduce enough drag with this mechanism to allow me to retard about 3 cars on the train. If our average down-grade train is 6 cars, that leaves 3 pushing against the locomotive. That seems to be under the threshold for the surging for all but our most egregious offenders, but it’s far from perfect. I’d like to get something that will allow us retard the entire train, so the couplers are all in tension on the way down the hill. I can probably get around the directional problem by fitting the brakes independently to both trucks, so you’d only apply the one set depending on which way you’re traveling. I didn’t have a chance to look into that this trip, as I spent my time working with three of dad’s newer locos, and fixing any operational or clearance issues they had. None of them exhibited any surging on the steep grade–even with as many as 10 cars in tow–so there was no incentive to revisit the issue.
I’ll take some pics and post them when I get back home.
Later,
K
Kevin Strong said:
It’s an experiment that still needs some tweaking, but essentially it works by tightening a string wrapped around the axle. The tricky thing is that there’s a very fine line between drag and locked wheels. That, and the direction the string is wrapped around the axles affects how well it slows them, so there’s a difference in efficacy based on direction of travel.
Interesting, or is that interestring. Yes, am curious for a photo report.
Good idea Kevin. So rather than string, how about a strap, say 1/4 to 1/2" (depending on what will fit) that is tightened by either an operational brake wheel or servo. I might experiment with this some too.
Daktah John said:
Good idea Kevin. So rather than string, how about a strap, say 1/4 to 1/2" (depending on what will fit) that is tightened by either an operational brake wheel or servo. I might experiment with this some too.
So, every time you come to a downgrade, you stop the train, set the brake, realize that you missed the mark, do it again, go down the grade, then release the brake. Then do it again, two minutes later when you encounter another grade. Seems kind of fussy, to me.
Still, worth consideration and refining.
Not running roundy-round here, so setting and releasing would be once per train. My Indoor and Outdoor divisions are separated by about 4 vertical feet resulting in a hefty 3.5-4.5% grade. The grade section is the running track between towns with industries.
On a busy day I run out and back 4 times. Once for set-out, twice to work industries then the last as a sweep. So I’d need to set and release 4 times each in a span of about 3 hours. Not too much fuss for me!
I have just discovered that I need to start a project on my “future projects” list, sooner then I had thought.
Now that there is no longer a restriction on the number of USA woodside cars that an engineer can tack behind an LGB locomotive. I have found that the engineers are hauling more cars behind the LGB Moguls, and even the LGB Forney, then they had hauled before. This is good for the railroad, since the locomotives are now earing their keep. But it has created another situation. These trains can no longer be run with lighted cabeese. Now that the train lengths have increased, the locomotive trips the relay in the reverse loop, to reverse the polarity on the mainline, before the caboose has cleared the main. This causes the caboose to short the main to the reverse loop, when it comes to the gap between the two. So, until I get the lighted cabeese rewired, those trains have to be run with unlighted cabeese.
But it was a sight to see that little Forney, hauling 10 USA woodside cars and a caboose, up the 2.58% grade and around the turn in Library. Sure she was going uphill slower then she went downhill, but she never slipped a driver nor stalled.
Steve, in the case on my dad’s railroad, the 5% is a very long (150’?) stretch of track, with a yard that we switch on each end of it. We set the brakes at the top when leaving the one yard, run down the grade, then release them at the bottom when we arrive at the next. The ruling grade on the rest of the railroad is “only” 4%, which for whatever reason doesn’t seem to cause any surging on the locos which do surge on the 5%. Going up that grade, trains are usually limited to 6 cars and a caboose, or a helper is called up. Some of our newer locos can handle longer trains (a credit to Barry’s Big Trains) but the rule still generally stands.
In terms of materials, I haven’t tried straps or anything but string. I’m thinking fishing line may be a little more “slippery,” thus give me a bit more control, but a 1/2" strap of leather just wrapped in a “U” around the axle may be a new way to approach the problem. It would probably solve the directional issue I’m currently having, and experimenting with the width and smoothness of the leather may provide sufficient variability and drag. I may have to play with that.
Later,
K
David Maynard said:
But it was a sight to see that little Forney, hauling 10 USA woodside cars and a caboose, up the 2.58% grade and around the turn in Library. Sure she was going uphill slower then she went downhill, but she never slipped a driver nor stalled.
“I think I can; I think I can; I think I can. Oh my gosh I did!” (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)
Kevin Strong said:
Steve, in the case on my dad’s railroad, the 5% is a very long (150’?) stretch of track, with a yard that we switch on each end of it. We set the brakes at the top when leaving the one yard, run down the grade, then release them at the bottom when we arrive at the next. The ruling grade on the rest of the railroad is “only” 4%, which for whatever reason doesn’t seem to cause any surging on the locos which do surge on the 5%. Going up that grade, trains are usually limited to 6 cars and a caboose, or a helper is called up. Some of our newer locos can handle longer trains (a credit to Barry’s Big Trains) but the rule still generally stands.
In terms of materials, I haven’t tried straps or anything but string. I’m thinking fishing line may be a little more “slippery,” thus give me a bit more control, but a 1/2" strap of leather just wrapped in a “U” around the axle may be a new way to approach the problem. It would probably solve the directional issue I’m currently having, and experimenting with the width and smoothness of the leather may provide sufficient variability and drag. I may have to play with that.
Later,
K
Kevin, can you describe how you “set the brakes?” Your post above was kind of brief.
