Beautiful day in Perth, Western Australia - and a public holiday!!! Got out in the garden after lunch, ready to throw some weight at the ramp.
The grey bit is the start of our test ramp. It’s all steel, around 10m long. For this year’s testing, we got rid of the curve that used to connect the ramp to the plastic trestle.
After a gentle start (under 3 degrees for the first three metres), the ramp angles steeply: two metres at 6.5 degrees!
The last five metres is split roughly in half, the first bit around 5 deg, the last bit just under four. That creates a “hump” at the join. YeeHAH!
At the end of the ramp is a switch leading on to a plastic trestle.
Beyond the trestle is the finishing line!
We test by weight. These two flat cars are each loaded up with a solid brick. Total weight of car and load is 3.4 kg. The other cars we used weighed between 1.6 and 3.1 kg loaded.
First up was 2262, a USA GP-38, with a 15.8 kg load, mostly bricks and brick off-cuts. USA flat cars and Aristo gondolas were used for testing.
2262 finally made it to the finish line, but only after detaching the two flatties with the solids. This loco did three consecutive runs pulling 11.5 kg, a pretty good effort.
395 is an Aristo GP-40. The last car shown in this photo is one of the flat cars loaded with a solid brick. 395 pulled 13.2 kg on its first run. However, the loco was unable to repeat the effort, nor was it able thereafter to match the GP-38’s 11.5 kg. The best it could do on subsequent runs was 9.8 kg. Since repeatability is vital in an experiment, draw your own conclusions!
4033, an Aristo Dash-9, was last year’s powerhouse. This loco easily managed three consecutive 13.2 kg runs.
At 15.8 kg, it was a near thing, but 4033 fell just short. The Dash-9 is still King of the Ramp. The GP-38 is a solid, consistent puller. The GP-40 is the joker in the deck.