Oakville had a visitor this week: forumer and shipbuilder extraordinaire Pete Nolan. Pete was at his Alabama home, only 90 or so minutes from me. We had a most enjoyable get together.
Been trying something different on The Sub - distributed power. Testbed is the 96 car earthworm, power is four FVM ES44s. I made sure the locos were running approximately the same, and put one on the rear. First couple of times around I found a few very minor issues and easily corrected them. Train now runs beautifully. The rear loco pushes more or less 25 cars, depending on where it is. The Sub's steepest grade is 2% and the train handles it both up and down with no problems. Here's a shot of the front at Bealville: And the rear at Caliente: I was a bit nervous when I tried it for the first time but I'm now confident in the train's performance - so much so that when the new release comes out soon I'll be adding another dozen cars. That'll be interesting. In the interest of full disclosure, all couplers are body mounted and trucks are equipped with FVM 36" metal wheels. I need to get the pusher's headlight dimly illuminated, but I think I have that figured out...
Really too cool Jim! The way to really make it go is to make sure you can speed match the locomotives very closely. If they are matched well enough, you just add a little to the momentum of the pusher and you can run the body mounts and truck mounts.
I've got it working really well now, David. The beauty of it is I no longer have to worry about stringlining on the S curve out of staging. In fact when IMRC releases the latest batch of 5161s this month I'm gonna add another 12. The train simply runs better than ever before.
Intermountain actually has a dimple for drilling to attach the coupler. Drill it, tap it, mount it and Bob's your uncle, done and done. You need to make sure the truck is properly offset (assuming you're using MT trucks) or the outboard axle could contact the coupler screw. Or you could use flat head screws and countersink them. I've not felt the need for that, there is adequate clearance as long as the trucks are properly positioned.
Jim, long an admirerer here; fabulous work! A question about the FVM wheels: are you using the newer, wider threads? Thanks, and kind regards, Otto K.
Yes, Otto. Really strange how this works out. I can run a given car all over the layout with no problems. I have quite a few BLMA cars, reefer and spine and flat, which of course came with the BLMA wheels, the original narrow tread from the first run. When there is a derailment, it's almost always one of these cars. If the same car derails twice at the same place, I replace the wheels with FVM wides. That usually solves the issue. Over time, I've eliminated the troublesome wheels. But there are still a lot of BLMA narrows out there running just fine, thank you. So why do these run and the others didn't? A mystery of life, I guess. The FVM wheels were never as narrow as the BLMA but I went to the wide version as a precaution. I have relatively few issues these days. It's nice
Boxcab - I have a video shot close to there, but not at the ranch. I'm overdue for some more videos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsBYnSgYLmA
Over at The Railwire on the product discussion page, I asked a question on the new FVM SD70ACes - how the ditch lights looked. (Excellent, we are told.) The usual thread drift happened and we started talking about the FVM GP60Ms and their miserable ditch lights. I've embarked on a project to remedy that, and as a tease, here's where I am now: I do plan a tutorial at a later date.
I've completed the first try at adding LEDs to one of my GP60s: I guess this is a good weekend to post because the ditch lights now look like pumpkins glowing from the inside. I think it's better than the factory's method, but I need to kill that glow. I have tried more paint on the lamp housing, and I've cut the brightness considerably. And the installation wasn't all that easy, but once you've made the mistakes...wasn't helped at all by the Digitrax sheet's showing the wrong wire color for F1. Elsewhere on the sheet it gave the correct designation but of course I was looking at the diagram. I will do more experimentation...
Jim, I recently installed a beacon and was able to adjust the brightness through CV's so I would think you could do the same. Another option is to add a different resistor. Hope this helps.
I did, John. Monkeyed with the value - I use a single resistor for two LEDs - usually 1K will do the job, but 'way too bright - ended up with 3300. Any more and would be too dim. There's gotta be a way. Thinking silver paint, then cover with a finish coat.
Jim, Silver would just reflect the light back into the diode. You would be better off using flat black.
