Run / Rest - how long?

I've run PS2 3V and TMCC locomotives at home for 2 hours straight with no issues. 

Ive never ran trains at a show or open house.  The only heavy duty running I've done was as a child, when we had a strict regimen (mom's rules).   The train gets set up in the corner of the living room sometime after thanksgiving and has to be packed up by Jan 1st.  There was no rest period except when i slept and went to school.  The guaranteed rest period was about 11 months, Jan to late Nov.   It still runs today ( 1948 671 freight set).

ive been doing shows with my 8'x 12' O and O27 gauge train board since 1999. Postwar and prewar trains go about 1/2 to 45 min. the post war locos will get quite warm if I run them more.

anything with a can motor, I can usually run them for an hour or more.

AND in every case, oil and lube jobs after every run session. If I run trains on Saturday, sunday morning I oil and lube trains before run session.

and in most cases on Friday nights and/or Saturday morning I pull locos apart so I can grease gear boxes.

I use 3 in one oil for lube and white lithium grease for gears and gear boxes.

as a side note, because I run my trains so often ate shows ( I go to five shows in the fall and early winter of the year in central and northern NYS.),

I occasionally have to pull post war and pre war locos apart to clean commutators, replace brushes, sometimes rebuild E-units. The locos with can motors

are pretty full proof, in 20 years of running at shows, I think I have only had to replace two can motors.

I run my modern pieces 6 hours straight and simply add smoke fluid and lube if needed and had zero issues  

At this point in my RR build I find PS-2 & 3 locos are too vulnerable to system failure due to shorting at closed points costing upwards of $300.00 to repair/replace.    I do run two or three of them simultaneously for grins and giggles occasionally but when seriously running 4 to 7 lines by myself I only use conventional.

I do need short protection on at least 9 ac power sources and protection when running against approx. 60  potentially closed 2 rail switch points, half of which are hand thrown, the other half Tortoise.

My conventional engines run endlessly without concern.  Although, at times conventional powered trains can be like preschoolers, they can hide in off scene spots and be hard to find at the start of the next run session.

When I had my trains set up at the mall, we were open 11 hours a day, six days a week and 8 hours on Sunday. We quickly learned that postwar engines couldn't take that kind of constant running. We eventually moved to an all can motored fleet, which was far more reliable. We did give all the trains a rest if there were no visitors,  but those cans could go for hours at a time, and months without maintenance.

One thing we did was, on one of the nine loops, we had a micro processor controlling five trains, running two at a time. It was a neat setup, with a 5 track yard and a passing siding on the far side of the loop. Three trains were facing one direction and the other two the opposite. So the two trains got 50% rest, and the three trains got 66% rest. Had we stayed open longer, more automation like that would have been implemented.

On my current layout, I've had a couple open houses where the trains run for the full four hours no problem. Again, I attribute that to can motors. The command electronics seem to have no impact. I run a 100% TMCC layout, no DCS.

When I visited as a teen the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) had a huge Santa Fe themed layout with trains (PW Lionel F3s, of course!) running continuously in a simulation of a trip across the Santa Fe Railroad. I'll bet they used Elliot's trick of staging several trains to give motors a rest. That was a beautiful layout. Don't know if it still exists.

Lew

I run at open house events, under MTH DCS and Lionel Legacy for up to an hour. If my run time extends beyond that I will bring a second train to run. When running conventionally I always bring a Williams engine, they will run forever

We ran MTH PS2/PS3 all day long for two and a half days when we did Cal Stewart.  We also ran MTH conventional tinplate (Standard Gauge) for the same lengths of time-again with no problems (other than some really worn pickup rollers).

Thanks everyone. I guess I was being really conservative and safe as I usually limit any one loco's run-time to about 20 minutes.  I also check periodically for any locos that might be running warm or hot. 

-RM

geysergazer posted:

When I visited as a teen the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) had a huge Santa Fe themed layout with trains (PW Lionel F3s, of course!) running continuously in a simulation of a trip across the Santa Fe Railroad. I'll bet they used Elliot's trick of staging several trains to give motors a rest. That was a beautiful layout. Don't know if it still exists.

Lew

Lew, those weren't Lionel. The old MSI layout was 2 rail O. That layout was torn down years ago and replaced with an impressive HO layout. I think they have full time people to maintain the layout and equipment.

Check out Wikipedia here.

I run a mix of modern PS2 3V and TMCC locomotives with both can motors and "Pullmor" motors as well as two Postwar Lionel locomotives with "Pullmor" that have been converted to TMCC using ERR components. My "Pullmor" locomotives consist of: a Postwar GP7 and modern GP9 "lashed up" pulling a dummy GP9 B unit and 12 modern scale freight cars and a coboose; a modern twin motor F3 pulling a dummy B unit with Railsounds 2.5, a dummy B unit, a dummy A unit, 9 modern scale refrigerator cars and a scale caboose; a modern twin motor F3 pulling a dummy B unit with Railsounds 2.5, a dummy B unit, a dummy A unit, and 6 60' modern aluminum passenger cars;  a postwar twin horizontal motor F3 pulling a dummy B unit with Railsounds 2.5, a dummy B unit, a dummy A unit, and 6 60' modern aluminum passenger cars. All of these Pullmor powered locomotives will run for 2 hours without their shells/chassis getting hotter than ambient temperature. I usually lube them about every 6 months and clean the brushes/commutators about once a year, if that. I don't have any grades on my layout and the locomotives aren't pulling very long trains so that may account for why I have no heat issues after running them for 2-3 hours straight. I also don't run the locomotives at full speed but instead in the 30-80 scale MPH range.  

In other words run your stuff. That's what it was designed to do.  

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

geysergazer posted:

When I visited as a teen the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) had a huge Santa Fe themed layout with trains (PW Lionel F3s, of course!) running continuously in a simulation of a trip across the Santa Fe Railroad. I'll bet they used Elliot's trick of staging several trains to give motors a rest. That was a beautiful layout. Don't know if it still exists.

Lew

Lew, those weren't Lionel. The old MSI layout was 2 rail O. That layout was torn down years ago and replaced with an impressive HO layout. I think they have full time people to maintain the layout and equipment.

Check out Wikipedia here.

 

Thanks! Hah. I learn something new every day. I really thought I remembered a center rail but I guess it was my brain adding-in the familiar thing to my actual memory. One of the reasons "eye witness accounts" are sometimes/often worthless. Boy, HO would be almost impossible to see from the floor above.

Lew

Of the layouts that I operate personally, I run engines with can motors for up to 8 or 9 hours continuously. Running with DCS made this a dream to operate as some tracks will have three consists chasing each other and cruise control let's me sit back an watch em roll.

early on i tried running some MPC and postwar stuff on smaller tracks by themselves but they just weren't made for that amount of continuous run time, required more maintenance and ran hotter than cans. Conventional Williams also ran great and had no problems for extended run times. Some of our earliest & cheapest  LionChief engines didn't fare so well, you could tell after a few hours that they were fatigued and running much slower vs. at the start of the session. The LC+ engines did a good job running all day.