At the risk of being accused of posting too much this week.................
What has been your luck w/ backing your trains through switches- have you any tricks to pass on to others?
Over on the 3 rail, there is a post on Switchless Layouts. The good, bad and ugly of using them and not. They post many valid points!
I put up a temp layout each Christmas, and consider switches to be a big part of all of them. This year's has probably 14, last year's might have had 18. I will admit, they can be a pain, and cause problems.
Pilots pick the points, Realtrax break off PW shoes/pickups, cars go left when they should go right. But...do you want to run your trains, or do you want to move your trains? I like to make them go places, thus I use the switches.
Over the years of dealing with Realtrax switches, and post war cars (I do believe that the loose gauging of the wheels causes many problems vs. the nicer wheel sets of modern cars) I have learned to somewhat modify-adjust the MTH switches so that they do fairly well.
For the last week, I have worked on a few switches that did not cooperate w/ PW cars....which is all I decided to run this year. The effort paid off.
Tonight, I think I hit the goal. Watch if you have time and if you desire. 8 PW cars (some w/ shoes/pickups) 10 switches, and the train backs through them at 10 MPH in both directions with no problems. Hard to believe. I kept waiting for the derail!
(it is not really that "entertaining" but if you run PW, you might like it, but it is long)
When done, I hooked up 14 of them and ran them through the switches forward for 20 loops! I might never be this lucky again. I tried to back the 14, but only 12 made it through an O31 switch before the strain was too much, and the engine jackknifed the car behind the tender. The switch was not the problem! Most of these are O31, some O72.
Usual accepted guidelines are heavy cars at the front....but when you reverse, that means they are pushing!
Greg
Video here if you want to view it being done........ http://s395.beta.photobucket.c...zpsd49fa423.mp4.html
