I have a 2353 ABA and 2343 AA santa fe F3 units. How do i get these to run back to back or together. I need more pulling power. How do you get engines in series?? thanks.
With conventional loco’s the simplest way is to lock the powered units into one direction, assuming these units have a lock-out device for the e-unit. This way should there be any kind of stutter going thru a switch or crossing the e-unit won’t trip, it never fails that some e-units are very sensitive while others are very slow.
Once the e-units are locked in the proper direction just couple together and you should be ready to roll. The only limitation is that the loco’s have about the same speed/gearing.
lionel2…Isn’t the SF unpowered B unit for the 2353 a match for both the 2353 and 2343 Warbonnets? You could leave the AA units untouched, power the B unit, and move it back and forth between the AA pairs. Somewhere late last night I thought I read a post where someone was hauling 25 cars with a 2343 AA pair without the benefit of powering the unpowered F3 A.
In the 2031 thread, Bob Nelson wrote about adding a motor and a power truck to the unpowered A unit and tethering the e-units in order to get more pulling power out of the single motored FAs. And he provided info on pulling power versus his dual motored F3 after the motor was added.
Jack
So lock both the powered A Units into same directions. then i am ready to roll. Nope the B unit I have is a louvered B unit to match the 2353 not the 2343. I do not have a screen roof vent B unit for my 2343. 4 motors running at one time can pull how many 2500 series passenger cars? I believe I have 6 lionel lines ones and 4 canadian pacific ones. Could i possibly pull all 6 of my lionel lines passenger cars around 031 track with twists and turns and all that?? i highly doubt it, but have to wait til Oct. to try it. The cars tend to tilt and fall over. My passenger set looks kinda dumb with just AA units and 4 passenger cars. i cannot even put my baggage car in the train or my other coach car. thanks.
I Buy TMCC and make a lash-ups with my motive power just like the big boys do [:-^]
You should find that lashing the two together will in fact pull the consist you describe.
The worst units to pull PW wise, are dummy F3s (As or Bs) followed by the 2500 series passenger cars.
I know the look is awsome to put them all together but if you remove the dummy A’s and the Dummy B right there is most of your drag. then lock the ont power A in reverse as described above and the other in fwd you will have a very powerful set of pullers. you can always put the dummies in a sideing in a ABA setup with a couple of cars behind them for looks.
I guess we can all assume you’re using a power supply with enough wattage to do this.
One extremely important part of lash ups, especially postwar lashups with no traction tires, is that power is nothing if you cant get it to the rails.
The actual motors in a F3 can pull a 20-25 car train, mabye more. But theres the issue that there is very little traction between the rails and the wheels. Put traction tires on your postwar trains, and your pulling ability can increase up to 50%.
But, if you do add multiple post war engines with no traction tires, you do get more traction, because you have more steel wheels on steel track adding more traction.
The whole point of this post to point out that its not the actual engine itself, its the problem of getting the true power from the motors to the rails. Its even a issue in real trains as well.
I will be using Z power to power my trains, I have no traction tires or any add-ons. So you suggest gettingthe non-powered A and B unit off the track, that would look kinda strange. But, yes i agree its more drag, rather have drag and have the looks than no drag and bad looks. But, how can i judge how worn the 2 powered A units motors are?? One A unit might be pulling or pushing the other powered A unit. Thus, wearing out the motors faster. Shoudl i put the faster F3 up front?? thanks.
You might consider putting all your non powered engines up front in front of your powered engines. That will help prevent sidelining the cars around curves.
Jim H
A falling car on 031 just needs more weight. With this problem you have the pulling power and it’s lifting the car off the track. In the end you can pull only so much weight, so you can experiment and find a happy medium between the 031 curves and the number of cars.
As long as you’re using locomotives with traditional universal motors, not modern can motors, you needn’t worry about motors fighting each other. Those older motors are a type that shares the load very gracefully.
Could this be done with any 2 pw locos? I know some engines I have seen start faster than others, I would think that this would be problematic.
Any two PW (pre-war) or PW (post-war) locomotives with universal motors will be fine together. A completely unloaded series-wound motor, which is what a universal motor is a type of, would run at an infinite speed. The actual speed depends not just on the applied voltage but also on the load. The locomotive that is faster unloaded will slow down as needed, without hogging the current; and the slower locomotive will speed up without becoming a drag on the other one, and still contribute to pulling the train.
This is not the case with permanent-magnet-field–“can”–motors, which want to run at a particular speed proportional to the applied voltage, no faster, no slower. When two such motors disagree, perhaps because of their gearing, on what that speed should be, the slower one actually tries to slow the faster one down. Instead of cooperating to pull the train, the motors devote some of their power to fighting with each other. This is not good.
Wire the motors in series. This will give full open-differential action and half the average motor speed for a given voltage.
Rob
I agree, Rob. But he says he has a 2353 and a 2343, which he should be able to run together with no complication. (I assumed that his use of the word “series” did not refer to electrical wiring but rather to double-heading.)