Thanks, Mark. It gives me something to do during the winter!
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PRR centipedes PM. Increasing traction.
These are two very long engines by BLI. Each has 16 driving wheels broken into two sets; each set has an idler wheel set so, only 12 wheels are powered. These engines are pretty heavy and I thought they would pull just about anything I attached to the back of them but they had trouble pulling a 14 passenger car set up the Cascade tunnel grade. The passenger cars are pretty heavy with 8 being brass and the others are plastic that were made recently but, still, I assumed the shear size of the engines would 'do the trick'.
Of the 8 sets of wheels, I removed two to apply some 'traction tires. The driver retaining plate has two screws at each end plus two 'snap' tabs in the center to remove the plate. The far left one is the 'idler' wheel set. One nice thing is it has a gear on the axle to it can be used as a spare in case one of the other drivers goes 'south'. Both wheels are insulated from the axle so the plate has metal tabs to make contact with the sides of the wheels. Caution needs to be taken when putting the plate back on to insure all tabs are inside the wheel's sides so they aren't bent.
Idler wheel set and close up of contact tabs. I removed the wheels for two reasons: 1) I don't have 3 hands, 2 to make electrical contact with the wheels via alligator clips while applying the wheel adhesive and 2) I tried the usual hot side engine and tender on a BLI GN S-2 4-8-4 and blew the decoder ( not sure why but it appears they don't used the 'standard' hot/ground as used on my brass steam engines.)
I used a soft brush to apply the 'bullfrog snot' after cleaning them with alcohol.
It takes a good 8 hours to dry and dries clear.
Engines were able to pull the passenger train through the cascade tunnel grade: mission accomplished using the 'bullfrog snot'. It's not cheap at about 20 bucks for a small container but, if it works, I'll pay it! As long as it doesn't dry out, it should be enough to do a lot of engines for a long time.
