Ants can lift objects 10 times their own weight If prototype locomotives can, do HO locomotives pull objects more than their own weight? If so how much more weight of their own can HO locomotives pull. I recall having my HO acela trainset pull my leather office chair on wheels on a carpet!!! I took off the coupler cover and tied a metal wire to the front of the ho Acela and to the bar above the wheel of my office chair!!!
I tied my boss’s chair to the bumper of a Yugo once…he didn’t see the humor in that, especially when the bumper flew off the car and hit him right in the chops.
Sorry, it’s Friday.
Not everything is proportionately scalable.
For example, model aircraft cannot be truly scale and give equal performance as their 1:1 brethren because the air stays a constant size. At some point a wooden bridge model can no longer carry a load in direct proportion to its size because the wood cells - the real structural element - do not shrink with the model. (Metals would behave the same way, but they’d have to be much smaller.)
KL
You must be bored, I am. That is why I answered. How many ants does it to bulid a HO Big Boy, that a question.
Bored again Cuda Ken
And I thought this was going to be about someone with a garden railroad with an ant problem. Can a G scale loco squash an ant? Can an ant derail a G scale loco? How does squashed ant juice affect traction on your ruling grade? How about the conductivity - remember all that formic acid in squashed ant juice.
IN other words, it’s been a long week and I’m about bored as cudaken. [zzz]
Sure, 20 cars at 4 ounces each = 80 ounces. 80/16=5 pounds. Does your HO loco weigh five pounds? Most will pull more than 20 cars.
At issue here is rollling friction, not the actual weight of the cars. The twist comes in with getting movement started. Perhaps coupler slack is a help here? As grade increases, car weight becomes more of a factor and the loco pulls fewer of them.
How much more is a difficult question. It would depend on loco wheel size, friction and number of drive wheels. Maybe someone has experimented and gan give a definitive answer. For what it’s worth [2c] I seem to recall diesel vs steam each being better in (either) pulling or starting but I don’t remember which is which.
Karl
I had an ant once run in front of my Conraiil Gp-38 moving a local. It didn’t like its legs being run over. It survived, but was moving more slowly afterwords.[:)]
I don’t know about ants, but I DO know a Japanese Bettle will derail a Bach B-23 and send it crashing 4’ to the floor. (don’t ask how I know this.[:(])