I've attempted to get the trains running by fettling the track. I have got the locomotive running sweetly in both directions. But when I attached a couple of wagons, then the running problems returned with a vengeance. I think that I pushed my luck too far.

This is because the coupling swings to far out, causing the following wagons to derail. When the track was fettled, increasing the gauge, the wagons stayed on the track, but the rolling resistance was too great.

When working with 2mm models, small locomotives are very light, and therefor there will be problems with effective electrical resistance will be very large. You have no way of increasing the locomotive weight to reduce it.

Also the hauling capacity of small loco's is very limited too, thus rolling resistance become critical. Over the years I have tried traction tyres etc. and there doesn't seem to be any way of gaining performace that way either.

I've been working with minium radius layout for a long time, and know the effect of wheel position relative to the track is very important. Thus when the radius is too small, effective resistance becomes too large too, because the the contact area, between wheel and rail head is too small.

When one constructs minimum space layouts, this situation often occurs. The only sane thing to do is admit you attempted to go to far. Then look at how the problem to see how they be solved.

In this case I can increase the board width by just over 20mm. The width was determined by the internal width that can fit within the carrying case. This might not sound much, but this will allow me to increase the track radius enough to solve the running problems.

So now it's lift the track along the back of the layout and do the woodwork. There are challenges, not problems in life. The thing I enjoy is look at the challenges and making the required changes and overcoming them.

Julie