New to forum w/ question

[alcuin]

Greetings all,

I stumbled across this forum just the other day and immediately signed on. I've just taken up a little n scale layout that I've been meaning to work on for years and it's great fun. I hope to have some pictures up soon of the first stages of progress.

I have a question: I have a few diesel locomotives in my fleet and would like to run some of them as two-engine consists. But inevitably one runs at a different speed from the other. Is there any way to get them to run together at the same speed? I see other modelers (on YouTube) doing so on their layout, so what's the secret? Thanks!

Chris

 

[rogerw]

Welcome Chris. More than likely they are using dcc.

 

[RonP]

Yes the question is are you running DCC or AKA digital command and control.

If you are not then i don't think you can match the speeds with DC. You could just use a dummy shell for engine 2.

 

[who_dat73]

Also in DC if you buy two of the exactully same engines say two Atlas sd40-2's they might get real close to the same running speed if made at the same time and all but mixing two diff companys and stuff is kinda a hit and miss type of thing... You might get close but not perfect and evin then you can put the slwer engine in the second position but be carfeull doing that as it might wear somthing out if its two far out of match...

 

[alcuin]

Thanks for your responses At this point I'm running analog with block wiring. The layout is so small that I thought DCC would be overkill. When I expand to a bigger layout I'll convert everything to DCC, but for now I guess I'll just have to use the "hit and miss" method you mentioned.

Chris

 

[60103]

Chris: if you have only a slight mismatch, you can get away with coupling them together. I have locos where one will run but the other won't even move unless the power is all the way up.
I suggest putting a train behind the faster one and loading it down until it runs at the same speed as the other.
What you may see others doing is running a dummy loco, one without a motor.

 

[alcuin]

Regarding the dummy units, I may just be insane enough to gut one of my beautiful Atlas gp-30's for that purpose, but I'm not sure how. Looking at the schematic, it seems I would have to leave the metal mainframe in since that's where the trucks are mounted. But wouldn't that make for a fairly heavy dummy engine?

Chris

 

[TrainNut]

I've taken lots of old engines and turned them into dummies. For the most part, all I remove is the motor and the gearing. That way, all my lights still work. Yep, they are heavy but that doesn't bother me.

 

[alcuin]

Cool :thumb: Come to think of it, maybe a little extra weight would be a good thing. When I test run my engines, I have to keep the throttle at the lowest possible setting or they're off to the races.