The title of the thread says it all. Under ideal conditions (ferromagnetic rails), how well does Lionel’s Magna-Traction work as opposed to traction tires or plain wheels?
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I bought a 70 year old F3 that has magna-traction and it runs great. I also bought a more recent loco with traction tires that have already fallen off.
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Excellent!
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Traction tires also decrease the number of wheels picking up power. The more tires, the less pickup. With Magne-Traction, the wheels still pickup power fully. (Yes, locos with traction tires can pick up power through the flanges on tire-equipped wheels, but it’s not complete contact with the rails)
Magne-Traction will also (in my experience) make the loco not wheel slip at all. With tire-equipped locos and locos with plain wheels they can slip with heavy loads / up grades. Magne-Traction locos in the same conditions will move without wheel slip, but can (and will) completely stall if the load is too heavy.
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Ah, thanks.
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As you might expect, MagneTraction works best on steel rails. Notably Lionel’s.
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I have to wonder if a flat rail, or perhaps a solid one, would be more effective than our hollow tubular track.
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I would suspect that a flat rail profile would give more contact surface, and would give better traction than a round/tubular rail profile. That advantage should be even greater with magnetraction
A Solid rail wouldn’t give any advantage over a hollow rail, the magnetism isn’t strong enough that a solid rail would give an advantage, but solid or hollow, the rail profile would still make a difference
Doug
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The question would be cost-effectively making it in steel.
You’d have to upset the railhead part to get the flat top and correct gauge corner, then form the rest with the operations for tubular rail. Perhaps use square pins.
I don’t think you’re going to draw steel the same way you draw nickel-silver. I don’t think it would be cost-effective to hot-roll it (like prototype rail).
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I’ve heard that MagneTraction doesn’t work well on the alloy rails like Gargraves, MTH and others make. Tinplate steel or stainless steel are the best.
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challenger3980 and Woke_Hoagland, that’s what I was thinking too.
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That’s what I’ve read. I expect that it depends upon the specific alloy. Nickel-silver appears to be the most common, and that won’t play nicely with the magnets from what I know.
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Not all stainless, of course; you’d need one of the ‘magnetically susceptible’ grades.
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Yes, which, if I recall correctly, is actually “less stainless” than otherwise (correct me if I’m wrong, which I probably am).
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The 400s are more susceptible to some types of corrosion, but they are still highly chromium-bearing so they form the self-healing chromium oxide layer.
Here’s a reasonably good ‘lay’ explanation:
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Ah, thanks!
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Nickle-silver (actually an alloy of copper and nickle) is non-ferrous and MagneTraction won’t work on it at all.
You make be familiar with nickle-silver by one of it’s other names like “German Silver” or if you’re into antique pocket watches “Silverode” and “Silveroid.” All the same stuff.
There ARE advantages to nickle-silver track such as corrosion resistance and the conductivity is excellent.
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Actually, the only variant of nickel-silver terminology that I’m familiar with is, in fact, plain old nickel silver. I started in N, and most of my track was nickel silver.
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Yep, same stuff. I forgot to mention it’s also been called cupronickle, around the turn of the 20th Century it was used as bullet jacketing material but didn’t work out as it left heavy metal fouling in rifle bores that was difficult to remove.
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I do recall hearing of cupronickle somewhere–maybe from my dad.
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