was reading a thread last night where I think someone said the p2k sd45 has peculiar gearing ratio. does that mean these units are never quite speed matched or close to other models or what am I hearing? does that mean much in how well they run or whatever? thoughts appreciated because I was just about to get a couple cnw units. thanks!
I have 5 P2K SD45’s, 2 in Huron Central colours and 3 in Soo colours. I don’t have any weird gear ratio issues with any of them. They all run at the same speed when MUed together and they all crawl at a snails pace. They are heavy loco’s and will pull a ton of cars. This is the first I’ve heard of any gear ratio issues with the SD45’s. Maybe the gear ratio was changed in the newer ones? Mine are all about 3 years old.
Sadly LL used a “Gear ratio of the month” approach in gearing different locomotives and this lead to a very poor unit consisting of different P2K locos.
Most manufacturers use a 14:1 ratio.
There are well discussed gear ratio issues with the P2K SD45s. Yes, they will run fine together. The issue arises when you try to run a P2K SD45 with a P2K SD50 or say Kato SD45. This is when the gear ratio issue arises. It has been also discussed that some of this can be overcome with DCC and the speed table settings used on the P2K SD45s.
jktrains
this is the note I saw earlier. I should have copied it to this post first off.
“The P2K SD45 looks very nice. However, they put some goofy gear ratio in them, like a 9:1 when most everything else uses 14:1. They are very fast”
I should have also noted, HO scale, dcc at home and dc at the club. Most likely run just the two sd45’s as a pair. Sounds like they’ll do ok with each other from your comments. thanks again!