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The limited haulage capacity of modern RTR models


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Had a very nice surprise today whilst running stock at the Mickleover club. A rake of 7 Mark 1's was formed. These were made up of 5 x Hornby and 2 x Hatchette magazine offerings. In recent weeks some of the Bachmann Jubilees have found similar size trains difficult to handle. This evening I pressed a Bachmann Hall into service. This had no problem hauling the above train and even managed to restart the set on a curve. The Bachmann Manor ran equally well. Then came the smaller locomotives. The Hornby Large Prairie and Bachmann Standard 3 showed similar prowess.

 

Surely the rake of coaches would prove too much for a Bachmann Pannier! No, not a bit of it. The little 0-6-0 was more than a match for its bigger stable mates. So not all ready to run models are poor!

 

 

GWR locos are always surefooted

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However, put fifteen on a Hornby Castle, and you will find it isn't up to it. Reputedly this class hauled this sort of load. The pannier will take that same train away comfortably. The reason is that the pannier has all its weight on driven wheels, while the Castle doesn't, and the drag from the unpowered wheels (plain bearings on the carrying wheels rather than pinpoints, and the braking action of the tender pick up wipers) is equal about four coaches. So despite the Castle (loco only)  being heavier then the pannier it has net inferior tractive performance which is plain wrong. (Just the same with Jinty vs Royal Scot or J72 vs B1 as equivalents from other lines.)

 

A little more weight over the coupled wheels, and a zero incremental drag pick up system on the tender using split axle wheelsets and collection via the pinpoints, and this is completely solved. The manufacturers have the technique available in their 'toolkit', if they were required to do it by their customers.

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Without entering into more than basic physics what any locomotive will pull depends upon its own weight and balance, the installed power available, the weight of the load and the rolling resistance offered by the train.  

 

Modern heavyweight diesel locos such as those produced by Bachmann and Heljan will mostly pull as much as you can couple behind them.  There are some exceptions but even the lesser power of the Claytons will cope with a prototypical loading.

 

More recent steam locos are usually of similar weight and just as with their real-life counterparts they too have a maximum tractive effort which can - for those who wish to engage in such things - be calculated from their wheel diameter and the weight available for traction.  Many will happily haul realistic loads.

 

The lighter offerings of ViTrains and some Hornby pieces will cope with correspondingly less on the hook but still offer good haulage for modern traction types.  Hornby has brought us some popular steam types which are difficult to balance in model scales and which therefore have restricted haulage capacity due to the low adhesive weight available.  The T9 is one such and the M7 another.

 

If we go back to the days of Lima and the contemporary lightweight Hornby products these were designed and built as developments of the table-top trains set locomotive.  While they are often competent performers they have lightweight motors on only one bogie and little in the way of ballasting amidships to balance the loco and improve traction; they can be (though are not necessarily) notorious for poor haulage .  Steam locos of this era can also be poor performers.  

 

I don't believe the "modern RTR" locomotive has any real issue of haulage capacity.  When compared with the typical offering of 20 - 25 years ago what we have now is superb.  I operate two HST sets in 2+8 formation on a layout which has some severe gradients and reverse (through relatively modest radius) curves in its 35 metre circuit.  The newer Hornby one has the heavyweight power car and cruises effortlessly; the earlier version has the pancake motor and until almost a kilo of extra weight was loaded into the body shell wouldn't pull more than two trailers and the dummy.  Now it copes adequately though with just a little complaint at two of the steeper spots.  The Hornby Terrier won't take even a two-coach load up the branch line which has a 1:40 incline yet the Bachmann 2-6-2T standard will manage six though in fairness that is not comparing like with like.

 

If anyone wants proof of just how much a recent or modern RTR item can start, can haul and can lift up a gradient and around curves I'll dig out the video of the Hornby "West Country" with 17 coaches on doing just that from a standing uphill start on an S-bend.  Or the Heljan class 128 parcel car which did the same with 36 coaches on and which has subsequently started and hauled no fewer than FIFTY though that feat has not yet been captured on film.

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However, put fifteen on a Hornby Castle, and you will find it isn't up to it. Reputedly this class hauled this sort of load.

Mine is. I just tested it on Wencombe apart from the fiddle yard where there is only about 4.5 ft of pure straight the rest of the circuit is on a curve ranging from 3-9ft radius. it just pulled 7 Bachman Mk1s, 4Bachmann Collets, 1 Bachmann Stanier, 2Hornby Staniers and 1 Hornby Gresly a total of 15 coaches at a prototypical speed. It only slipped slightly when the whole train was on the curve almost half of it on 3ft radius. So Ican only agree with Tony Wright that the castle does not suffer from a lack of grunt.

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There will be sample to sample variation, and there's another factor applicable to Hornby's pick up wipers. My sole example of a Castle would do the 15 on when new, but after a year of being run wouldn't anymore. Until I took the unpowered wheel pick up wipers on the tender out of contact, which 'restored' its performance. Find this consistently with Hornby's material combination. Also observed on the 8F, Q1, M7, 7P, A3, A4, -  by the time their B1, B17, L1 and O1 came out I had learned to take all the unpowered wheel wipers out of contact after initial testing, simply to save the bother later. Haven't seen any such troubles with the split axle arrangement picking up through pin points, thus my feeling that this is the preferable techique for pick up off unpowered wheels wherever possible.

 

I have come to the conclusion that I am nearly the sole 'JD Power' style tester in OO.  New performance isn't my sole consideration, it's how it does after prolonged regular operation - my trains run every day I am home -  and has acquired genuine mileage against the requirement of hauling a full size load. The only other folk who (occasionally) report similar troubles are the Ormesby Hall layout operating team.

 

Incidentally the Hornby M7 is the most startlingly good piece of RTR. I have one example (bought s/h to be eventually cannibalised for a Stirling 0-4-4T) and it will get 12 Bach mk1s away on level track with the most lovely couple of half turns of wheelslip, then trundle them along (ECS working you understand) at any speed desired from dead slow to 30mph. Any sustained gradient floors it of course. Just about manages four coaches up a 1 in 80, pushing with bunker leading.

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My Castle is not new, in fact it is getting on for 4years old. Not only has it run regularly on Wencombe often just lapping whilst I was getting on with something else, it has spent more than a few hours (and I mean for 45min to 1hour sessions of non stop running)  on a friends layout as well as  along stint on Tony Wrights layout. and By the way I accidently dropped it about a year ago and apart from a broken sand pipe it has performed as well after the accident as it did before.

 

Would certainly agree about the M7, my friends regularly pulls 8 maunsells on his 44ftx10ft layout.

Edited by westerner
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This is a topic that quite intrigues me.

 

Ever since I saw a video of my old WMRC colleague Tony Wright demonstrating the haulage power of the new Hornby P2, I exercised the brain cell and concluded that the only way a loco with lighter adhesive weight could outhaul a heavier one would be if the lighter one had a better coefficient of friction between wheels and rail. Tony showed that his own build heavy A2/2 (a P2 rebuild) was less able to grip than the lighter P2. The number of driving wheels is irrelevant, by the way.

 

This led me to make some comparisons with some of my own Hornby locos. I have a number of Black 5s and one of them is so slippery it won't pull 6 bogies whereas another will cheerfully walk away with 10 without a slip. All this from 2 supposedly mechanically identical locos. The same applies to the several Hornby Scots/rebuilt Patriots. 45512 skids whereas 45536 does not. And I have one very slippery Duchess too, whereas others are not.

 

The only conclusion I can come to is that some of the batches of driving wheels must have tyres made from different materials. There seems to be no other possible explanation for this disparity.

 

As an aside, I have not noticed disparities like this with Bachmann locos.

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Best assessment is to temporarily rig the powered mechanism alone for test running, to assess just how much of the difference may be due to the drag imposed by carrying and tender wheelsets. With these removed you get 'the truth' of what the potential traction is from a mechanism, and can quickly determine if there is significant drag from the unpowered wheelsets.

 

There is a systematic difference in traction, and thus almost certainly coefficient of friction, between the tyres on Bachmann and Hornby steam models on nickel silver rail, with Hornby typically exerting about 10% more force at equal weight on the driven wheels. Variability in both manufacturers product, Bachmann usually takes a fair amount of running time from new before full tractive performance is in evidence, but then very consistent; Hornby there were definitely differences in tyre material performance in the past, worst I have seen the old Sanda Kan production of the Duchess model. Performance from Hornby post-Sanda Kan has been very consistent, for the models I have sampled.

 

Edited to add: latterly effectively packing the weight into steam models seems to be gaining ground. Hornby's move to largely metal loco bodies on small prototypes is very welcome. Heljan's scheme on their two 2-8-0s will hopefully give the other design shops a further nudge in the direction of 'fill it or make it from metal' for maximum weight.

Edited by 34theletterbetweenB&D
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Does this not replicate real life? Some individual members of a locomotive class would gain reputations as slippers or poor pullers. Quite why I have never been sure but it certainly seemed to affect Bulleid’s light Pacific types where a nominally identical pair of locomotives would show quite different characteristics.

 

There is of course the variable of different driving styles and even different weights of coal and water on board but still some locos gained bad reputations.

 

Incidentally I found the same when driving buses. We received a batch of 13 brand new identical vehicles no two of which handled exactly alike. Two were particularly sluggish and one forever seemed to have hyperactive brakes requiring the lightest touch to avoid ejecting passengers through the windscreen.

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This is a topic that quite intrigues me.

 

Ever since I saw a video of my old WMRC colleague Tony Wright demonstrating the haulage power of the new Hornby P2, I exercised the brain cell and concluded that the only way a loco with lighter adhesive weight could outhaul a heavier one would be if the lighter one had a better coefficient of friction between wheels and rail. Tony showed that his own build heavy A2/2 (a P2 rebuild) was less able to grip than the lighter P2. The number of driving wheels is irrelevant, by the way.

 

This led me to make some comparisons with some of my own Hornby locos. I have a number of Black 5s and one of them is so slippery it won't pull 6 bogies whereas another will cheerfully walk away with 10 without a slip. All this from 2 supposedly mechanically identical locos. The same applies to the several Hornby Scots/rebuilt Patriots. 45512 skids whereas 45536 does not. And I have one very slippery Duchess too, whereas others are not.

 

The only conclusion I can come to is that some of the batches of driving wheels must have tyres made from different materials. There seems to be no other possible explanation for this disparity.

 

As an aside, I have not noticed disparities like this with Bachmann locos.

Thanks for reminding me, Terry,

 

Just out of interest, 60501 now has added ballast (the shame of one of my locos being 'beaten' by an RTR loco!), so much so that she (he?) will now pull more than the P2. 

 

On Little Bytham, RTR locos are of little use, especially the ER Pacifics from Hornby and Bachmann. Some of the expresses are loaded to 14 (kit-built) bogies and need heavy metal locos to pull them. 

 

Coefficient of friction sounds a bit scientific to me. My solution to traction problems is to just add weight. The more the better. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

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Just to reinforce what has been said

 

Best assessment is to temporarily rig the powered mechanism alone for test running, to assess just how much of the difference may be due to the drag imposed by carrying and tender wheelsets. t.

 

Most Bachmann models incorporate springs both for pony, trailing and even driving wheel sets.  If the springing is too strong the effect can be to lift the front (or back) of the engine and remove weight from the driving wheels - reducing wheel to rail friction.  For my rather steeply graded layout I find it necessary to reduce or even totally remove the springing from Bachmann trailing wheels.  In addition with some of the older models the springs varied considerably in 'strength' between variants of the same engine.  One of my earliest and certainly most glaring examples was Class 45 (The Royal Artilleryman) which was grossly over sprung compared to sister engine Class 46 (Leicestershire and Derbyshire Yeomanry).

 

Ray

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Best pulling Hornby passenger locos by far, in my experience, are the rebuilt West Countries.

 

Far from "going off" with use, I find that many Bachmann locos roughly double their haulage capacity when they have had a substantial amount of running (probably around 20 hours in stints of 15 to 20 minutes).

 

Examples (the same loco used both before-and-after to exclude sample differences) :

 

Collett goods - new, it struggled with more than three coaches, after a couple years regular running, quite happy with six. 

 

N - one coach and a utility van better than the Collett at both stages.

 

9F - new 30 wagons on the level, round curves down to 2'6" radius. Later 46 on a 1-in-50, started without slipping with the last ten on a similar curve at the bottom. It would probably have done more but we ran out of wagons and time and the opportunity didn't present itself for a re-match.

 

I would advise against heavily loading any loco when new. Find out what they will pull without slipping and reduce that by a third until the shine is off the wheels, then increase the load gradually over time. Loaded running-in is most beneficial to long-term performance. My rolling road is only used to bed in the gears and watch the loco's action in a way that can't be observed on a layout.

 

Also, make sure the crank-pins and valve gear are lubricated - the drag caused by dry Walschaerts is considerable. One of my 3MT tanks was so gutless and its running so rough that it nearly got sent back. Just a few drops of GT85 transformed it into one of my best runners.

 

John

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This is a little academic for me, but interesting; my BLT is limited to 11 minerals and a van as the heaviest train and all my locos can handle it easily.  But 15 for a (real) Castle is pushing it if time is to be kept; the load for up South Wales trains for Castles and Britannias was 14 max but 16 could be taken with assistance from Severn Tunnel to Stoke Gifford.  Timings were not especially tight, and the fastest trains between Cardiff to London, the Red Dragon, Capitals United, and Pembroke Coast (the last was a Landore Castle turn) were timed at 3 hours and 15 minutes.

 

The 'fastest train in the world', the Castle hauled 'Cheltenham Spa Express' between Swindon and Paddington, was limited to 8 coaches, sufficient for the traffic.

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I took part in a “pulling trials” one evening at the club, on the 16.5 mm gauge test track (a circuit of about 65ft run)

 

Top performer was my On16.5 MMI K28, which was a bit of a cheat I know.. given its sheer size and weight, not really surprising. Load was 48 axles (12 cars) of a mixture of AMS and Bachman flat cars, with various items on the cars for ballast to improve running (there are a couple of spots which really need easing). I had no more stock at that point.

 

My venerable cast-body Hornby 2-6-4T was in the “top 10” with 10 bogie coaches and no wheelslip, although the noise and smell indicated that it shouldn’t continue for long!

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There is no substitute for weight.

 

..My venerable cast-body Hornsby 2-6-4T was in the “top 10” with 10 bogie coaches and no wheelslip, although the noise and smell indicated that it shouldn’t continue for long!

 

My old Hornby Dublo 8F weighs 500g and will out haul all my newer models.  I have not tested its limit on the 'flat' but I have a video of it flying round a 36 inch curve on a 1 in  56 gradient hauling 46 wagons.

 

 

For comparison there is a video of my Bachmann WD on the 'flat' starting off +60 wagons. 

 

 

The same engine could only manage 26 wagons on the gradient.  This particular model has had around 15gm of led shot trickled into the front boiler space.

 

Ray

Edited by Silver Sidelines
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Coefficient of friction sounds a bit scientific to me. My solution to traction problems is to just add weight. The more the better. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

Apparently not Tony, I read, in response to a piece I wrote about adding weight into the Hattons 14xx in relation to transiting from level to an incline:

 

Hmmm. So why would someone propose adding more weight in the bunker? I'm no great expert on loco mechs, but I did do Physics at school:

and

Yes I get that, Julian. It's still physics though; weight distribution is physics, is it not? Adding weight to the back end of a loco that's too light at the front - which is what's being proposed in the blog I've linked to in my post - is probably not going to improve matters.

 

Postings from someone who's never built a chassis as far as I'm aware, and also hadn't even bothered with cursory research to establish that the prototype's leading axle was in fact the one carrying the least weight. I bet Dean and Churchward wished they'd done physics at school, imagine what they could have learnt from the internet experts!

 

With the RTR loco there is a co-efficient of friction element as 34c mentions. The Hattons 14xx does respond to adding weight in the bunker, but load it too far, and the loco slips with the wheels spinning even on level track. That is loading it to the extreme though.

 

Its something 34c and I have talked over in the past but I think theres already one sentence in this thread that largely provides an answer in post #15 from Miss Prism:

 These are after all, just toys, and I don't think manufacturers lose too much sleep over the inability of a 4mm model Castle to work 12 coaches up a gentle grade, because the majority of the marketplace hasn't got nor expects to have room for that scenario.

 

I welcome the use of metal as recent models have done, the Peckett possibly the best example of RTR steam weight vs size, but I think as Miss Prism mentions whilst 'we' RTR buyers aren't running significant sized trains as a matter of course, across gradients too, the pulling power isn't as significant a design element as it might be.

 

 

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Like Tony Wright, I am fazed by the scientific terms; I only have a vague understanding of them, but many years of experience has taught me that a good heavy loco will out pull a good light 'un anytime and in any conditions.  It will run more smoothly into the bargain because of the flywheel effect of it's momentum.  Hornby Dublo seems to have come up a lot in this discussion and not only were these models very heavy, but also had very coarse scale wheels which put a lot of metal in contact with the rail; surely this makes a difference even allowing for the fact that greater pressure is exerted by the same model on finer scale wheels with less area in contact with the rail.  I cannot believe that, even if the 'coefficient of friction' formula gives the same theoretical answer (forgive me if I have misunderstood what I think this scientific term means), the actual performance is the same.

 

Materials make a difference as well; in the olden days we had steel track, which seemed to allow steel wheels to grip better and pull more; sometimes an overloaded loco would stall rather than spin it's wheels.  Nickel silver rails last much longer and are easier to keep clean, on the whole A Good Thing IMHO, but traction is lost with steel or other allow tyres.  

 

Running in may make a difference if the brand new wheels are smooth and need to roughen themselves by working in before they can give their best performance.  I would certainly recommend running locos in for a period in any case, irrespective of how much they pull; all the manufacturers state that this is necessary, which I strongly believe it is, and allowing them to work in gently will give you an immense payback in terms of slow performance, smooth starts and stops, and haulage.  Overloading a brand new loco out of the box and caning it with the controller are not a recipe for good running or a long and reliable service life.  This is a bit of an issue for me, with a very small BLT and light loads; my locos take a very long time to run in and my Bachmann 64xx still seems to be improving gradually after over a year of regular use.  A Hornby 42xx took about 6 months, though all my locos have been pretty good straight from the box  The initial running in to get rid of any out of the box stiffness and snag any tight spots or pickup issues can be done over about half an hour, though, running the loco backwards and forwards with a proper stop at each end at a medium speed to start with and then building up to full throttle (which on my layout will be the only time the loco works to this), then finishing off with some slow runs to see how slowly you can get her to run reliably and controllably.

 

Anyway, back to ballasting locos.  I have only found the need to do this with one of mine, a second Hornby 2761 which refused to run smoothly at a decently slow speed, vital for a loco in it's declining years on a pick up freight, it's normal duty.  The problem here wasn't haulage; the thing will pull the side of a house down, but a combination of higher than necessary gearing (a chronic and perpetual fault with RTR, but they are improving slowly and are better than they used to was) and overpowered springing of the back axle was lifting the rear of the loco off the track a little.  Hornby's downloadable service sheet for the loco suggests that they are not unaware of the issue, and suggests either trimming the springs, which bear down rather crudely on the rear axle, if they are too powerful as mine are, or stretching them to strengthen them if they are not powerful enough.  This sounded to me like a guaranteed recipe for springs pinging off in the direction of the Planet Zarg, where the sky is green, the fiields are blue, and there is a completely different set of fascia options on the Ford Ka; you would not believe how different it is on Zarg.  So I ballasted the bunker as heavily as I could with Liquid Lead and hid it with some real coal; this, along with new (actually secondhand from a defunct Westward 64xx) whitemetal boiler fittings, has nailed the little beeatch down and she runs pretty well now.  

 

The extra ballast is not over the wheels and presumably detracts from her haulage capacity, but on my layout it doesn't really make any difference; the smooth slow running is more important to me!

 

Those of you having trouble with single drivers, or 0-4-2s/2-4-0s etc might be mildly cheered up by the fact that real railways had major issues balancing these engines as well...

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It doesn't matter how coarse HD wheels are, the track they ran on was normal Code 100, which was unusually fine for r-t-r in its time.

 

Once the width of the rail-head is fully covered, the tread left hanging over the edge does absolutely nothing except look unsightly.

 

John

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There is no substitute for weight.

 

 

 

My old Hornby Dublo 8F weighs 500g and will out haul all my newer models. I have not tested its limit on the 'flat' but I have a video of it flying round a 36 inch curve on a 1 in 56 gradient hauling 46 wagons.

 

https://youtu.be/EKApY0G5NHw

 

.....

 

Ray

That Hornby Dublo growling sound is pure nostalgia! Edited by rockershovel
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Another loco that I forgot to mention earlier that is rather poor on traction performance is my GWR Castle Class loco number 4081 Warwick Castle.

 

It has a loco chassis mounted version of a Hornby ringfield motor which when it runs it sounds like a Bachmann scot class loco with a split chassis system.

 

The motor is such a poor performer that if there was a suitable way I could get rid of the detachable ringfield section to allow me to repower it I would do it.

 

It drives the wheels via the rear driving axle but when the ringfield section is removed it leaves an awkward shaped gap to work within terms of planning a possible repowering of the loco, short of kitbuilding a chassis for it.

Will a CD drawer motor go in? They seem to be becoming the standard fix for dodgy pancake types.

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I think that the pinnacle in Bachmann haulage has passed. A 2-car 170 with four driven axles out of eight (50%) without traction tyres will pull a significant tail load on test, but a more modern 4-car 350 with its single power bogie - two driven axles out of sixteen (13%) can just about pull itself around and won't make it up a steep incline without slipping unless you remove a coach - it really could do with a drive upgrade to power both bogies from the central motor!

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...but also had very coarse scale wheels which put a lot of metal in contact with the rail; surely this makes a difference even allowing for the fact that greater pressure is exerted by the same model on finer scale wheels with less area in contact with the rail.  I cannot believe that, even if the 'coefficient of friction' formula gives the same theoretical answer (forgive me if I have misunderstood what I think this scientific term means), the actual performance is the same...

If the tyres are coned - as they should be - then it is the same tiny contact patch on the rail, whatever the tyre width. There's a ton of variables to control to demonstrate that area of contact is not relevant, for this application (two hard materails in contact lightly loaded so there is no significant deformation). A simple experiment you can do is replace unflanged wheelsets with flanged from another example of the same model. Traction will not improve, except by the additional weight of the flanged wheels as compared to unflanged, which will be lost within the experimental error unless you are a very skilled experimentalist...

 

I think that the pinnacle in Bachmann haulage has passed. A 2-car 170 with four driven axles out of eight (50%) without traction tyres will pull a significant tail load on test, but a more modern 4-car 350 with its single power bogie - two driven axles out of sixteen (13%) can just about pull itself around and won't make it up a steep incline without slipping unless you remove a coach - it really could do with a drive upgrade to power both bogies from the central motor!

 It's the inconsistency that puzzles me. All the RTR manfacturers know what is required, and sometimes do it. And sometimes they don't. At least with the centre motor all wheel drives for twin bogie traction there is reasonable consistency. In steam it's a real mixture. Latterly Hornby seem to have got the message, with largely metal body constructions, resulting in small 0-6-0, 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 models that pull well, because of the combination of good weight with the centre of balance within the coupled wheelbase.

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RTR models will always be compromises because of the need to factor in efficient production and assembly methods; this is something considered at the design stage.  00 was originally developed because of this, the available motors being to large to fit into 'half 0' loco bodies, and the limited space is still a factor, as nowadays we insist on good cab detail and daylight beneath boilers in conjunction with loco drives. 

 

Kit and scratch builders have a greater choice of body and chassis materials, drive trains, and motors, always assuming that they have the skill to employ them (I don't!), and may build compensated chassis which, done properly, will also increase the loco's ability to put power down on to the track.  RTR is compromised by definition, and will never perform as well as well built or scratch.  That said, some recent RTR, notably 2-8-0 chassis such as Hornby's 42xx or Baccy's 04 have reputations as very strong pullers!

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