1950's Lionel Locomotives Pulling Power

5% is very steep, could you change that to around 2% or is it too late

too late.... it might only be around 4%..... My 2032 can make it pretty easily...As I look at all the other locomotives, I just wonder how the 2032 rates compared to others.... thanks Ray

I find the Lionel Postwar locomotives with Magnetraction made in the early 1950s have more pulling power than the ones made in the late 1950s and 1960s. For instance, my black NW2 (ATSF) 6220 switcher has more pulling power than my blue 626 B&O 44 tonner center cab switcher. 

Some locomotives lose their Magnetraction. When I see a Postwar Lionel locomotive at a train show, I will test its Magnetraction on some tubular track before I buy it.

The Lionel F3 diesels with 2 motors and Magnetraction made in the early 1950s (the Santa Fe, NY Central, Southern, etc.), are good pullers.

A 5% grade is a lot. I believe the Lionel graduated tressle set has that grade, so it is possible to have smooth running long trains with that grade. However, if your priority is to run long trains, you might consider reducing or eliminating that 5% grade as I have done.

Modern locomotives have traction tires, which, IMO, make them better pullers than Magnetraction locomotives. Both improve a locomotive's pulling power.

I have some Williams and K Line locomotives made in the late 1990s and early 2000s that are tremendous pullers and were economical (around $300 new). The owner of my LHS told me that Williams engines have bigger motors than most locomotives, which make them superior pullers.

MTH locomotives tend to be very good pullers, but some are better than others, IMO. For instance, my Proto 1 Jersey Central FM Trainmaster diesel is a better puller than my Proto 2 Pennsy Turbine steamer, but that turbine is still a good puller.

General considerations for better pulling power include traction tires, Magnetraction and the heft of the engine.

Arnold

Another factor is GG track does not hold MT as well as tubular track. 5% IS steep. Newer 2 motor engines will pull better and they have rubber tires for traction. However at 5% they will probably stretch more often with long trains.

Magnatraction is also less effective on GarGraves track because there are no steel ties to complete the magnetic "loop."

Rusty

It depends, MWALZ,

My advice would have been to start with track having ferrous metal rails, and then buy Postwar or modern'ish Lionel engines that have Magne-traction. IMHO one cannot beat the traction advantage of engines so equipped.

I dunno if your Gargraves track has ferrous metal rails or not. 

There is also more railhead with tubular track versus gar graves for the magnetraction to grab to. ...Paul 2

You have many strikes against you. First off the FAs and NW2s only have a single motor. Even with magnetraction, most is lost on the Gargraves track as the magnetic path is incomplete unlike Lionel tubular which has the outside rails joined together. Then the 5% grade.

AKAIK only the Trainmasters and most F3s had two motors and likely the only engines that could deal with that grade. Best choice would be a Trainmaster as it doesn't have to pull one or two heavy dummy locomotives behind it.

Another option is Williams. Their FAs and NW2s and most all the newer Golden Memories diesels other than the PW type 44 tonners have two motors plus traction tires.

Hard to tell them apart other than the growl.

Pete

Rusty Traque posted:

...Magnatraction is also less effective on GarGraves track because there are no steel ties to complete the magnetic "loop."

Norton posted:

... most is lost on the Gargraves track as the magnetic path is incomplete unlike Lionel tubular which has the outside rails joined together.

MagneTraction is less effective on GarGraves track because there are no steel ties, not because they are missing to complete the magnetic "loop." There is just less material under the axles to be attracted to.

This can be tested by placing extra ties under the running rails longitudinally instead of laterally, leaving the "circuit" open.

And yes, those fancy MagneTraction illustrations by Lionel did a good job of selling the feature... just like the pink-coated stomach cartoon animation did for Pepto-Bismol.

Thanks Guys! Wow! What great information! This is my 3rd post and it will NEVER cease to amaze me how fast you all reply with such incredible information! I do not regret my 5% grade or bending all that Gargraves track.... because I love watching the locomotives climb & I love the look and flexibility of the GG track.  This just gives me a reason to look at those modern Williams locomotives. You guys made my day! Thanks for all the advice! 

Happy New Year!

ADCX Rob posted:

Rusty Traque posted:

...Magnatraction is also less effective on GarGraves track because there are no steel ties to complete the magnetic "loop."

Norton posted:

... most is lost on the Gargraves track as the magnetic path is incomplete unlike Lionel tubular which has the outside rails joined together.

MagneTraction is less effective on GarGraves track because there are no steel ties, not because they are missing to complete the magnetic "loop." There is just less material under the axles to be attracted to.

This can be tested by placing extra ties under the running rails longitudinally instead of laterally, leaving the "circuit" open.

And yes, those fancy MagneTraction illustrations by Lionel did a good job of selling the feature... just like the pink-coated stomach cartoon animation did for Pepto-Bismol.

 

Not to belabor the point but, after doing some reading (because I am NOT an expert on this topic) I found that soft iron keepers are frequently used to "PRESERVE" magnetism over time. So if you put your trains away for the next few years, some type of soft iron keeper would help to preserve whatever amount of magnatraction you hade/have. This apparently is especially true of alnico magnets, something Lionel touted way back when. I believe that changed somewhere along the way, as I know Thomas and Percy have much stronger neodymium magnets, although not enough to do any good at all.

I wonder if anyone ever made some keepers just for Lionel trains?

So back to steel cross ties, do they work as keepers? I don't know, but all the articles talked about soft iron keepers, not steel, per se. So I'm thinking the steel ties might have at best, a limited benefit for storage. None of the articles I read described any increase in magnetic pulling power because of keepers, or in our case the steel ties.

I'd go for something with traction tires because they beat Magnetraction for drawbar pull. Any MTH engine and many post-LTI Lionel engines. My MTH SW1500s have two motors and four traction tires and will pull stumps. 

GeoPeg posted: 

 

So back to steel cross ties, do they work as keepers? I don't know, but all the articles talked about soft iron keepers, not steel, per se. So I'm thinking the steel ties might have at best, a limited benefit for storage. None of the articles I read described any increase in magnetic pulling power because of keepers, or in our case the steel ties.

The steel ties do work as keepers and its the reason magnetraction works better on tubular than Gargraves. Soft iron is better than mild steel because it has lower reluctance (resistance to magnetic force) but steel is still far better than air which all you have with Gargraves.

Pete

mwalz posted:

Thanks Guys! Wow! What great information! This is my 3rd post and it will NEVER cease to amaze me how fast you all reply with such incredible information! I do not regret my 5% grade or bending all that Gargraves track.... because I love watching the locomotives climb & I love the look and flexibility of the GG track.  This just gives me a reason to look at those modern Williams locomotives. You guys made my day! Thanks for all the advice! 

Happy New Year!

If you look for the earlier Williams FM trainmasters, and similar, all of these are twin motored like pointed out above, even better yet IMO, some of these are twin Pittman motors. Now you can really pull a house down ......get your favorite out-of -reach priced original postwar copies for a fraction of the cost.........Pat 

geysergazer posted:

I'd go for something with traction tires because they beat Magnetraction for drawbar pull. Any MTH engine and many post-LTI Lionel engines. My MTH SW1500s have two motors and four traction tires and will pull stumps. 

Lew,

I had a couple trees cut down and was just about to pay to have the stumps ground down.  It would be a lot less expensive to just buy a length of chain and a MTH loco with traction tires but, before I do so,  I'd love to see a video of such stump pulling first .

This has been discussed at length a couple of times in the past year.

Magnets lose their magnetic strength at a rate of less than 1% every TEN YEARS.  So your 1959 engine with magnatraction will be down to 94% by now.  The prewar engines magnetic strength will be lower.  

Heat and mechanical shock will decrease the magnetic strength also.

Think of magnetism as an DC electric circuit waiting to be connected or completed.  The steel based rails and ties complete that circuit.  Wooden/plastic ties and aluminum rails do not.

Today's rare earth magnets are much stronger per volume and shouldn't be compared to the 1950s magnets.

BTW 4% on highway is a pretty steep climb for auto and truck traffic.  Hang a few dead weight autos or truck trailers to the motorized unit and you will see a drastic difference. 

I know nothing about the Williams FM trainmasters. When you said to look for the "Earlier" Williams Tranmasters, what year? How is the quality of the brand new Williams FM and/or the MTH ?

Williams diesels after 1984 had traction tires, electronic reverse and dual can motors.  That should be the oldest Williams diesel you should consider.  As you move forward into the 90's Williams has better sounds but nothing to compare to new MTH or Lionel.  If you like bulletproof convential, Williams should be considered.  After 1987 Williams passenger cars had Korean trucks with fast angle wheels and needle point axles.  Anything before that is like trying to pull postwar passenger cars, way too much drag.

Modern locomotives are a coupe of orders of magnitude "stronger" than the old AC locos. No contest.

It has to do with torquey modern permag ("can") motors, better gearing and even those blasted traction tires, which do allow modern locos to put that superior power to the rail more consistently (Magnetraction would not be able to do this).

The "better gearing" superiority is not completely consistent, however. The Lionel scale Hudson of the late 30's had good, almost very good, gearing, while the modern die-cast Williams can-motored copy of this loco has some of the worst gearing ever, which tends to apply to most Williams die-cast steam (this does not apply to their 80's - 90's brass locos; no connection).

If the wheels are slipping, add some small lead weights to the FA (right above/around the motorized truck). 5% is steep, but shouldn’t be so much that it won’t climb if weight is added over the drive wheels. 

I don't like traction tires personally.    First for philosophical reason, real trains have metal (steel) wheels not rubber tires.    If one loco won't pull the grade, add a second loco, that is what the real guys do.    Next traction tires stretch and/or wear out of time and have to be replaced.   Magnetraction wheels do not.     If you move a loco with traction tires manually you can damage or stretcht the tires.    I was yelled at big time for doing this in a hobby shop to try to see something behind it that I was interested in on the display layout.    Also some lubricants will damage the traction tires or cause them to stretch.    Changing traction tires on steamer requiers removing the rods, not always a trivial jjob.   Finally I don't know the availability of traction tires for all models, but I have seen posts with posters lamenting trying to find them for older locos.

mwalz posted:

I know nothing about the Williams FM trainmasters. When you said to look for the "Earlier" Williams Tranmasters, what year? How is the quality of the brand new Williams FM and/or the MTH ?

you can’t go wrong with with any of the Williams products, the ones form the 1980’s are the simplest made. Obviously the less fancy electronics, the simpler maintenance, and parts replacement is.......me, myself I’m partial to a Pittman motor, and some of these earlier models are so equipped with them.....learn all you can about the product line, and talk to more folks that know about them.....being armed with knowledge is the key.......I’ll let others discuss the MTH stuff.........Pat

Go with the later Williams FM because of the flywheels.  I have early Williams with Pittmans and no flywheels and they can come to an abrupt stop (not good) over dirty track etc causing derailments.  Same problem with the early non-flywheeled Custom Trains FM.

My Williams GP9 will pull 20 scale sized cars with no issues.

The only AC motored Postwar or Postwar style locomotives that Lionel made that really pull worth a darn, and close to modern standards, are the FM Train Masters, twin motored F3s (either horizontal or vertical motored), GP7/GP9s (with 2028-100 style motors, if you double head them), and GG1s. Everything else is really a light puller. If you want to pull longer trains up a grade with Postwar stuff run modern or MPC era cars. They are light weight and roll much, much better than Postwar cars. 

Does Williams still make the smaller 0-27 gauge diesels? I am hoping to find this smaller size. If not, when did they stop making them?

Not sure if they still make them but starting around 2002 the began their Golden Memories series of Post War reproduction. At that time they pretty much made all the Alco FAs, NW2s, GPs, and 44 tonners as well as the O gauge FMs and F3s. I prefer the ones made at that time up to when Bachman took it over. You can find many of them on the auction sites. 

FWIW I have a set of Alco FAs mint lettered for UP as well as 5 12" passenger cars also mint never out of the box. This is the reproduction of the 1950 Anniversary  set. PM me if interested.

Pete

Is there a good website that documents the Williams line and the different years? 

mwalz posted:

Does Williams still make the smaller 0-27 gauge diesels? I am hoping to find this smaller size. If not, when did they stop making them?

This is always a debatable topic, technically speaking, most of the stuff as far as the diesels made by Williams, MTH, and even Lionel are actually scale sized, but are built to handle tight curves. Most are rated for O31.....and can handle O27 just fine....common sense comes into play here........to answer your other question, I don’t know of any website that covers extensively the full Williams line, but I seem to recall a publication about their stuff....

since your new to all of this, a suggestion would be to look for a railroad club in your area, or visit some train shows/ swap meets and start looking and ask questions no better way than to put your hands on something and be able to feel it’s heft, and get knowledgeable information from folks in a club or finding someone you can trust at a swap meet......can’t get that staring at a computer screen.......😉.........Pat

Go over to robertstrains.com and tool around his site.  You can also link to other information on Williams from there.

A great article on testing types of O track, Magna-Traction, etc is in October 2004 Classic Toy Trains magazine.  An article on pages 66 to 71 titled "Testing 9 Types of Track" by Phillip Hays gives test data he generated with various tests of the tracks of the the 2004 time including Lionel O & 027 tubular old and new, Atlas Steel and nickel-silver, Gargraves regular and SS, MTH RealTacx.  He runs 5 tests and 16 locomotives. 

A summary of the article including graphs and data are in the pg 2 on post linked below.  Page one has lots of discussions on Magna-Traction.

Here a few bits that relate to Magna-Traction and GarGraves track.

"As far as Magne-Traction, he found it accounts for 33-50% of total traction force on the rails for lightweight locos (mostly diesels), 25% on heavy diesels and 10-20% for heavy die cast metal steamer locos.  The type of track also gives different results too.  The Atlas O steel track with T profile gave the best results.  The common tubular track with steel ties performed 43-53 % as effectively as Atlas T while GarGraves track was 20-30% as effective.  Atlas O nickel-silver, MTH RealTrax both non-ferrous produced near zero magnetic adhesion.  He found the Lionel tubular track has 6% better traction over the metal ties."

https://ogrforum.com/...-megatraction?page=2

Charlie

Charlie, thanks for the links to the great article!

I did a much less extensive test about 15 years ago but got very similar results.  I had only Lionel O and 027,  and Gargraves Regular and Stainless.  All 4 produced different results for any fixed engine (with Magnetraction).Basically more ferrous mass = better pulling.  So Lionel O was better than the thinner 027, and Regular Gargraves better than Stainless, provided I was testing a Magnetraction loco.

I never got  around to doing it, but for a near optimal hill (grade) for Magnetraction engines, I decided either to merge a bunch of Lionel O with twice as many metal ties, or take some Gargraves Regular and insert steel rods into the outside rails.  Or both.

Anyone can do their own testing with their own locomotives.  Just get a pull scale from a scientific house and bolt a dummy coupler onto it and you're in business.

          John

A twin motored Williams GP9 might fit the bill.  Heavy, 2 motors, traction tires.  All engine weight is on the track, no dummy axle.

Power likely isn't the issue; traction on +4% is. (Maybe transformer is too small?)

The answer is likely increasing traction..... by any means.

Real trains modify the track with sand; I modified one rail on the grade with two sided tape; topside lightly de-tacked, flange rub area highly de-tacked and sometimes even a trace of grease smeared on the RUB/SIDE to  stop climbing in curves. Once detacked/dressed it's good "forever"....  It needs replacing/recovering about every year and a half as wheels wear it near the apex. Takes about 10min.

A single open frame motor E-33 can pull about a dozen hoppers uphill on about 12-14v. More weight in the loco would increase that number if I wanted to.

Steam and articulated like a GG-1 can be more sketchy at transition from 0% to grade. The pilots, drawbars, linked trucks and their springs are factors that can get upset at vertical differences happening too fast. Steam cow catchers dive and bottom out  at the grade change on the center rail; #1.

Going downhill on too fast a grade and your 6-8 driver motor is going to teater/totter or fall onto the downhill angle.... or ski-jump if there is speed. Articulated may have forward trucks hang in space; giving opportunity for them to shift off to the side; derail.

So anyhow, your transition length from flat to grade might be another factor in what works and what doesn't.

"Get Er Done style traction solution; but I don't regret it.

"My aroma therapy? Smoke Pellets."

Yes!   Could someone get candles made that smell like smoke pellets?

hands down the strongest postwar locos on my layout are an early lionel s2 turbine (with the atomic motor), and a marx 1666 with a traction tire. if your really stuck on having a vintage piece,i’d recommend them. as a matter of fact, the marx 666 and 1666 locomotives with traction tires were included with trestle sets. 

Signalwoman posted:

hands down the strongest postwar locos on my layout are an early lionel s2 turbine (with the atomic motor), and a marx 1666 with a traction tire. if your really stuck on having a vintage piece,i’d recommend them. as a matter of fact, the marx 666 and 1666 locomotives with traction tires were included with trestle sets. 

I have to agree on the Lionel 671 Turbine.  I have one with the atomic motor, that brushplate is nothing more than an advertising gimmick, but the key to the tractive force is the huge lead weight in the boiler.

I have a 681 Turbine that is also a great puller, unique looking, and smooth running. 

Can't go wrong with the Postwar NYC 2344..

These are all good suggestions, but I think the real main issues are:

5% grade

5% grade

5% grade

Just my 2 cents...times 3. 

Mark in Oregon