A locomotive taking a 4' suicide dive and only breaking a coupler and drawbar would be cause to break out the champagne in my book! That's some good luck. Any time something of mine takes a fall, I'm picking up bits and pieces. As for the topic... I don't have room to run the whole Hiawatha consist, so I haven't run into any issues with the 4-4-2's pulling ability! This is all great advice for when I get a bigger layout going, though. The real thing wound up pulling the original 6-car consist, plus two additional coaches and one express... but all across more or less level terrain. Probably didn't hurt that they were the biggest and heaviest Atlantics ever built...
One thing I forgot. Adding weight to a tender can assure better contact with the rails. A intermittent contact can and will lead to a locomotive stalling. This is what Bob E., aka Powersteamguy1790 was sharing earlier. And what I was agreeing to earlier Hope that helps. LOL, only if I deserve it. COL Hearing your locomotive took a dive off the layout almost gave me a heart attack. I don't need another one. Glad it all turned out well.
You should have seen his face! It may have shortened his life by a few hours! It was amazing that it did so well after the drop, and is still pulling huge numbers of cars!
Ok. So no one has tried to add weight to this little guy? Not in the tender but the engine.... Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
Without cutting/drilling away parts of the frame and replacing them with more dense material, I'm not sure how you would add weight to this loco. The split frame chassis fills the entire shell.
As I said previously, there is no room in the locomotive shell to add any weight. Staying cool and having fun with it...... Shades
