Subject:
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Re: What's the longest distance your train has run?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:57:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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1634 times
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In lugnet.trains, John Gerlach wrote:
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...
So my question - what’s the longest distance one of your trains has run
during a show? One of the kids watching the layout timed
my SD-50
around the layout, and I did a little math and came up with the fact that it
traveled over 28 miles (45 kilometers) Saturday & Sunday. 9 hours Saturday
with just a couple of brief stops to re-rail train cars or re-attach cars
that got uncoupled, and another 6 hours on Sunday with just a couple more
brief stops. I kept telling people I was going to “run it till it stopped”,
and it just didn’t stop!
JohnG, GMLTC
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I like the SD50.
The outer circuit main line of my layout measures 13.53m (90 straights + 16
curves). The speed of the train is 2mph around this circuit, a scale speed of
78mph in 8mm:1ft scale (the maximum speed at which no derailments occur). At
exhibitions I typically run for half an hour at a time, then switch trains to
avoid overheating. My aim is to make the motors last a long time, and there is
also the point that the public might like to see different trains!
The train might do 50% of the work on that circuit over two 8 hour days, so
that’s 8 hours’ running per exhibition, or 16 miles. I guess that means your
motors will wear out twice as fast as mine :-)
I usually have 3 trains on the outer circuit, 4 on the inner circuit, with
another two in the yard loops and two more in the sidings.
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=77382
I have taken other measures to extend motor life, by doubling up on motors, with
a wire between the two on each loco. The train in question has four motors, all
connected. This helps with load sharing and also redundancy of contacts in case
one motor loses power when crawling over a switch.
Theoretically, you could just sit a motor on a circle of track and leave it with
the controller on full power. This would do about 125mph scale speed in 8mm:1ft
scale, 3.28mph, so that’s 78.74 miles in 24 hours. A motor on its own might not
wear out like a motor in a train, since the load is smaller. I wonder how far
TLC has run train motors to test their life? Presumably they were designed with
a certain characteristic life in mind, to optimise cost?
If you want to avoid decoupling problems (I’ve previously had locos decouple,
run round the track and hit the detached train!), replace the two coupling shoes
with a technic 5L 4mm wide liftarm and two dark grey connector pegs. This is
great for permanent rakes of wagons, but not for the loco if you want to swap
trains. I find it particularly useful because my trains are heavier than 6-wide
ones and so have more friction. The Pendolino train pulls 1 Amp of current at
about 8 Volts.
Mark
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | What's the longest distance your train has run?
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| The GMLTC was in Moorhead, Minnesota for the 27th Annual (URL) Hjemkomst Festival> last weekend. We had a straight-line layout, they had us set up in a long hallway so we used six straight modules with a couple empty tables, and left two corner (...) (20 years ago, 28-Jun-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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