magickmaker
New member
A couple years ago I was at a club event where a number of module layouts had been thrown together. After chatting with a friend for a while, he asked me if I wanted to take a train off on a short run. Being rather excited about the prospect, I said sure, and my lash up was put together. I got to pull a rather nice little sand train, with a couple geeps and this odd F B unit on the head end. Much of the train consisted of "live" or real loads of sand (making it heavier than usual.) The train was probably a good 8 feet long, which in HO is rather good sized.
So, off on the Mainline I went, my little train lumbering around. I noticed as I rounded one turn, that I was having trouble getting moving. It seemed somewhat sluggish. Since I'd never run a DCC system, I figured that was the problem. Well as I came around one turn on a slight grade, my train makes this sudden little lurch and then shudder before coming to a stop. No matter how much power I applied, the train wouldn't budge. Well, it turned out that my B unit was just there for sound. The unit was a Dummy.
The easy solution here would have been to clear the mainline behind me, and let me back the little consist down into the nearby yard and replace the B unit with a working engine.
That wasn't the one we picked. For some reason, which has since been lost to me the guys with the club decided to tack on this steamer, a large Mikado, onto the front of my consist with the idea being that he'd help me over the grade and down into the yard. This was with two operators, so I guess that may have been the reason. Either way, he looks and asks if I'm ready, to which I reply "yeah" and off we go. He was a bit heavy on the throttle, the Mikado being located just over the edge of the grade, when he opened it, there was a mighty "yank" of the train followed by a loud "PATING!" Looking we quickly noticed the bottom half of my train, some four feet in total, go trundling back DOWN the grade and into the yard. They didn't run a long way though, coming to a very spectacular and resounding stop when they met a passenger train head on.
Sand had gone EVERYWHERE. I swear, and it may seem like an exaggeration, but when the cars hit the locomotive, there was a huge cloud of dust. It looked like the E unit on the passenger train had just exploded. Once everything settled down, we all had a good laugh about it. From that point on, there were no live sand loads without a helper unit in the rear.
So, off on the Mainline I went, my little train lumbering around. I noticed as I rounded one turn, that I was having trouble getting moving. It seemed somewhat sluggish. Since I'd never run a DCC system, I figured that was the problem. Well as I came around one turn on a slight grade, my train makes this sudden little lurch and then shudder before coming to a stop. No matter how much power I applied, the train wouldn't budge. Well, it turned out that my B unit was just there for sound. The unit was a Dummy.
The easy solution here would have been to clear the mainline behind me, and let me back the little consist down into the nearby yard and replace the B unit with a working engine.
That wasn't the one we picked. For some reason, which has since been lost to me the guys with the club decided to tack on this steamer, a large Mikado, onto the front of my consist with the idea being that he'd help me over the grade and down into the yard. This was with two operators, so I guess that may have been the reason. Either way, he looks and asks if I'm ready, to which I reply "yeah" and off we go. He was a bit heavy on the throttle, the Mikado being located just over the edge of the grade, when he opened it, there was a mighty "yank" of the train followed by a loud "PATING!" Looking we quickly noticed the bottom half of my train, some four feet in total, go trundling back DOWN the grade and into the yard. They didn't run a long way though, coming to a very spectacular and resounding stop when they met a passenger train head on.
Sand had gone EVERYWHERE. I swear, and it may seem like an exaggeration, but when the cars hit the locomotive, there was a huge cloud of dust. It looked like the E unit on the passenger train had just exploded. Once everything settled down, we all had a good laugh about it. From that point on, there were no live sand loads without a helper unit in the rear.
