fungus

Agreed, I've been thinking of doing the same thing with my Bachmann Tornado. It is one of my worst haulers, the only 6+ - driving wheel loco to equal it being the Bachmann 3F 0-6-0. My garden railway has 1 in 50 gradients, and the most these two can manage is 3 coaches. Tornado has very shiny wheel treads, which probably doesn't help. Incidentally, to assess improvements without going into the garden every time, I have made a simple test rig. A straight and level piece of track is attached to a shelf, and a controller connected. A length of strong thread has a loop at one end to fit over the loco coupling hook, and runs along the track to the end of the shelf, over a piece of low-friction tape on the edge, and hangs vertically with a container tied to the end. I have used a spray paint tin lid which weighs 7g, and I have to hand about 6 large ball bearings weighing 8g each. You can use anything similar, providing you know the weights. Get the loco to lift the container with increasing numbers of weights, until it can't manage, then subtract one. If it lifts it but with the wheels slipping, I count the last ball as a half-ball. Tornado only manages 2 balls, with slipping wheels, so the weight of train it could pull up 1 in 50 is (7+1.5X8)X50-(weight of engine + tender). To get the number of coaches, simply divide by the average coach weight (I use a figure of 150g), and round down the result to the nearest integer. To make the calculation easy and record the results, I have set up a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. I have found that the results agree quite accurately with tests in the garden using real coaches.