I've also got a Cow/Calf TR-6 painted in SP colors on eBay right now. I'm kind of supprised that nobody has bid in it yet. The loco is a real heavyweight puller capable of moving over 200 cars without any problems. It is equipped with a Hobbytown switcher drive and is very quiet in operation.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
Don't despair yet...I have stuff on EBay from time to time, and it seems the bids always come in at the last minute.
That's it! Watch the last 10 min.of an item and keep "refreshing" the page. All sorts of activity on an interesting item.
Dave
Not despairing. Just letting the group know of a very uniqui loco which will be a very nice addition to any larger layout which is very capable of pulling long cuts of cars. BTW, I've found that it is possible to open Kadee knuckles with enough weight in a loco but this loco is a lot lighter than that needed weight. Still, 102 cars on a 2% grade is a nice puller.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
I don't believe a cow and calf in real life could handle the load you are talking about. Did you weight them with depleted URAINIUM????? ;-)
John
Actually, in real llife, such locos handled cuts of hundreds of cars in the yard. Remember that the gearing on such locos is lower than for road engines and when a single F7 could roll a 100 car train at 60mph, a simple little switcher should also be able to handle the same cut of cars around the yard. FWIW, the motor is in the calf and that is the heavier unit of the loco. I could do some more work and up the pulling cap. but it pulls more than enough as it is. I'll note that Hobbytown drives are well able to handle such pulling cap. without problems as opposed to the plastic stuff that most of you use. I normally ran that loco at about 10smph which is a fairly slow crawl for most locos when switching and just used the reversing switch for doing the switching. Flywheels make the acceleration/deceleration of the loco smooth and when you've got a hundred cars on the coupler, it takes a while to get the slack out of the cut.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
BTW, even if I did have some uranium available, I'd not use it. The dust is just too nasty to deal with. Lead at the least is soft enough to be able to pound it into the desired shapes.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
I'll vouch for the pulling power of one of those Hobbytown drives...I once had one of their Alco RS-3's and it could easily do 100 cars on a club layout. Only thing was,once you got it rolling, with the flywheels, etc., you definitely had to plan your stops!!!
I have never heard of a cow and calf pull that much...........in ANY case, I am not questioning the pulling capacity of Hobbytown drives. Didn't SP use a "herd" up on the NWP into Eureka? They used them more like road engines up there as I recall. I remember the Alco crocodiles used in Eugene on the hump there and they were road engines. I think the SP used SD-7's for a while as switchers. As delivered they were in Tiger stripe paint which denoted Switcher duty. Not to say that SP never used them for anything else. I think later some got dual controls for passenger service. I have one SP diesel (SD-7) in Black Widow for sentimental reasons. Hmmmmmmm make a plaster cast of the inside of the body shell and use it for a mold to form a lead weight for extra pulling power. Years and years ago I had a PFM GN 0-8 class mike, I added a bit of extra weight to that...........MAN could that thing pull. The 0-8's were humungus anyway. I miss that old lokie...........yep Tenshodo circa 1966, good runner, didn't look too bad either.
John
"Bob May" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news-1.nethere.net...
The interesting version of the flywheel drive that didn't last too long was the clutch flywheel. When the power went off, those things could go for several feet if you were really rolling along. The intention of the clutch was to make for smoother starts and stops. The unfortunate thing was that hte clutch was tricky to setup and the starts were slow to get started and then the clutch would fully engage and the engine would do a slow leap forward. The clutch was a centrifigual setup of rubber inside that ran against the zamak flywheel and you needed to use some oil to keep the thing set right. Too much oil and the clutch would take a long time to lockup and too little and the lockup happened suddenly and at a low speed. Needless to say, they weren't popular.
-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?
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