I remember seeing in a book the picture of a Lionel N&W J in a promo photo on Lionel track that was sitting on top of a rail with a string going to the front of a real N&W J. Say if you got a real unloaded boxcar on flat straight track with the brakes off, how many Lionel 2 motor GP9s would it take to move it? Whats the tractive effort of a 2 motor GP9?
I don’t think Lionel has made a two-motored GP-9 yet.
Jon [8D]
I did see a picture of one of the German manufactures pulling a real coach/passenger car with a large number of HO locos. Guess you could do somthing similar with O. Maybe someone has got some more info.
Nick
I found the pic in All Aboard by Ron Hollander. 
In the CTT mag, they list the draw power of the engines that they test. Most are just over a pound. If a person can get a real boxcar moving by himself ( I haven’t got a clue if its even possible), then I would say 100-150. Once you got it moving, you wouldn’t need as many. If you can find the draw weight of the box car, you should be able to get a rough estimate. Of course for the cost of 150 engines, you could just buy the real thing and save the headaches!
Wes
Yes, Lionel’s 2-motor GP-9’s have the DC can motors in the trucks.
- Terry
A typical railroad car can carry about 3 times its own weight. The empty weight of a 4-axle car is therefore about equal to the maximum axle loading, which is usually 33 tons in America. A rule of thumb is that the drawbar force needed to move a car on level track is equivalent to a .25-percent grade, or 1/400 of the car’s weight. That works out to 165 pounds.
The force to start the car was an issue with the now-forbidden friction bearings (which gave rise to the technique of “bunching the slack” to start a train); but it is not so important with modern roller bearings.
Notice that the way those strings are angled upward from the toy-train’s coupler, they would lift the tender off the track before any serious pulling could happen.