Drag Freight and Loco Trials?

[GDorsett]

I know long drag freight and locomotive trials/operations simulations aren't a thing in Japan, but I know everyone has wondered what their locomotive can do at some point.

My Kato DE10 can pull all of my HO JP stock with relative ease (even if the real thing couldn't even pull my entire KoKi set) and during a couple operating sessions, it seemed to lose traction at about fifteen US freight cars.

Well, today me and my father were trying to break records to see how long we could make our train and we hit 85 freight cars, one RPO, and two cabooses. He was pulling it with two EMD E8s, but I had to know...and, well, one Kato EF510-500 pulled the ENTIRE, 88 car train around the layout several times without slipping. It was chugging, but it pulled the train. I now have a new record for most cars behind one locomotive, beating my previous best of 32 freight cars behind an EMD SD-35.

 

I'll have a video handy in a couple days.

 

Makes me wonder, has anyone else thrown everything they had at a locomotive just to see how much it could pull? What are your records?

Edited January 13, 2019 by GDorsett

[railsquid]

Not systematically, but I was messing about once and ended up seeing how much a simple Kato KOKUDEN motor car could power - turned out it was still happy at 12 cars in total, and that on a loop where the curves at either end were on a slight incline.

 

e

[GDorsett]

What's that Pullman doing in there!

One of these things is not like the other...

[railsquid]

19 minutes ago, GDorsett said:

What's that Pullman doing in there!

One of these things is not like the other...

 

It was a random acquisition which came as part of a job lot (as did most of my American stock), and was close to hand when I was looking for carriages fitted with Rapido couplings.

[GDorsett]

If I hadn't left my KoKi and WaMu fleet in my car, I'd have had over 100 behind this train. Then you'd have been able to yell at me for mixing things worse.

Oops.

[GDorsett]

Here's the video:

 

[chadbag]

Pretty impressive!

[Kiha66]

My kato DD51 will happily pull a 60 car train of kato freight cars up a 3% grade on the club layout, however it can only pull 4 of the club's track cleaning cars.  I think a huge part of the pulling power of Japanese engines is down to the running quality of the rolling stock, seems kato and tomix cars just roll much better than those of other brands.

[shadowtiger25]

My tenshodo C62 could pull 60+ coal cars at my last club. Sadly I never took a video and now that club is 6 hours away

[GDorsett]

19 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

My kato DD51 will happily pull a 60 car train of kato freight cars up a 3% grade on the club layout, however it can only pull 4 of the club's track cleaning cars.  I think a huge part of the pulling power of Japanese engines is down to the running quality of the rolling stock, seems kato and tomix cars just roll much better than those of other brands.

 

50 minutes ago, shadowtiger25 said:

My tenshodo C62 could pull 60+ coal cars at my last club. Sadly I never took a video and now that club is 6 hours away

That's one of the reasons I didn't use my JP stock and used me and my father's US stock, the JP stock rolls bloody perfectly. All of my stock run together (30 cars) takes abut as much effort to move as about ten US cars that are properly tuned. Why, I'm not sure, but wow. I can only imagine how many JP cars this EF510 could pull considering it pulled nearly 90 US cars and still had more to give.

[shadowtiger25]

the JP stock has no weight to it.

US will typically have weights to keep from derailing (thats what they tell me at least. I have had people tell me my cars will derail with out weight. I have yet to have one)

[GDorsett]

It's not even really the weight, they just roll better to begin with. The only rivals I have in low rolling resistance are a pair of 30' Slurry tank cars from Walthers. They weigh a lot, but you can put them on a flat surface and they'll start moving. The only cars that are better are the JP cars.