Lashing 2 MPC era diesels together

CHINA - How much is faster? Try using faster as lead engine. If it doesn't have traction tires you should be OK. If it has tires, the second engine may have the tires pulled if they tend to skid more than turn.

I always put the faster engine first, did that for years didn't harm any of the engines. 

If you haven't already, lock both engines' E-units in the direction they're to run. That will eliminate any chance of a stray power loss from tripping one of the E-units and having one go to neutral, or worse, reverse -- that will help protect any traction tires.

The faster motor will tend to do more of the work, but the slower one, since power is already applied, will have little or no resistance to being pulled or pushed up to speed by the other. It's not as efficient as dual-motor units (They're wired to balance power to the motors which makes faster/slower largely irrelevant) but it will work fine.

Thanks 

Very Nice!

@EricF posted:

It's not as efficient as dual-motor units (They're wired to balance power to the motors which makes faster/slower largely irrelevant) but it will work fine.

No, twin-motored diesels are wired just like two separate engines, but wired in parallel to one E-unit, and perform just like two identical single-motored engines running coupled back-to-back.

@chinatrain99 posted:

I got a couple mpc locomotives I’m going to run in “series”.  One is faster than the other.  Dumb question is do I pull or push?  

It doesn't matter. Once they are pulling a load, the difference won't be noticed.

I have four MPC Penn Central Geeps lashed up without a problem.

I would think the faster engine would be in the second position, closer to the load (cars being pulled).

The load would have a tendency to slow the faster engine down, making it closer to the speed of the slower "lead" engine.