How do you plan out the Cars placement on a long train, Do you have the heaviest Cars by the engine and work back towards the tail getting lighter, Stagger heavy/light, or some other ordering of the loads to reduce derails from the cars getting pulled off the rails in curves?
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Sounds like your plan of putting the heaviest cars at the head end would work the best - however the long-term solution is to weight all your cars correctly so you don't have to worry about it. NMRA has some guidelines : http://www.nmra.org/beginner/weighthttp://tycodepot.com/
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I've found most rolling stock to be underweight from the factory. Running short trains on simple loops with little or no turnouts it's not much of an issue, but with longer trains and more complex trackwork the added weight really helps. More is not always better though, too much weight has its own issues.http://tycodepot.com/
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I heard about an incident where the Union Pacific cut in some mid train helpers right next to some empty flat cars. Yes, that was an "oops!" Seems there's a computer program that tells you where to put the helpers, but it doesn't take weight into account and the humans didn't take their own better judgment into account. Carpe Manana!
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All of my cars are weighted based on length or slightly heavy. The major things I have had issues are with car lengths and the types coupler mounting. I attempt to keep talgo mounts together, found that a car mounted pushing on a talgo mounted can cause a derailment in a curve.
Another issue I have had is if there is an S curve anywhere in the track work. The train will naturally attempt to straiten out. When it does this it will pull / push the cars off the track. To avoid this I attempt to keep at least one car length between curves and make the curves as gradual as possible.
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Posted - November 03 2015 : 11:14:57 AM
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