What is the normal pulling power of a beep? I purchased my first one at the greenburg trian show yesterday. it seems to struggle with 4 cars… is this normal? I wasnt expecting much because of the size and all but 4 cars seems too little.
The pulling power would depend on a lot things like the weight of the cars(which can vary a lot) how free rolling the trucks are, any grades on the layout, and on longer trains sharp curves can make a difference.
IIRC, mine normally handle 6/7 easily, but that doesn’t include any die-cast cars.
Doug
I have a NYC Beep 5904 pulling a five car Lionel NYC Passenger expansion set consist with no problems on a non-switch plain oval of tubular track. It does run slower than my Lionel engine pulling the same load but, for my purposes, it is fine. It does not appear to ‘labor’.
Mine was having trouble pulling a postwar box car, postwar gondola, modern flatcar and modern caboose. no grades. would that be normal?
The post war box car and gondola, could be the culprits, many of those I believe had wheels that rotated on the axles, those have MUCH more rolling resistance than the newer “Fast Angle” wheel sets, where the wheels turn WITH the axles, not on them, and they have fine point axle ends, with much less rolling resistance.
Also are you sure it is struggling? the Beeps are geared much slower than most other locomotives, this is one of the reasons that I like them so much for younger operators. They will not go fast enough to derail on even 027 curves, and with just two fixed axles they are much easier for young kids to put on the tracks, they are greater beginer locomotives.
If you have more than one Beep and want to run them Back to Back(Long end is the FRONT on these BTW) the shells will go on either direction. The Beeps always start in forward, so if running them together and one “Hiccups” and trips the reverse unit, just turn the throttle all the way off for about 10-15 seconds, and they will both retun to Forward, and be in-sync again.
Great Little Locomotives, I Love mine,
Doug
Make sure the wheels on your post war cars are moving freely. I had a problem with my beep and solved it by making sure the wheels moved freely and I lubed them up.
If you click on my website noted below in my signiture, then click videos, you can scroll down and see two beeps at full power pulling about six car. This is all the faster they will go.
I really like my BEEPS, but now that they have priced them greater than $99, I can find much better locomotives for the price including the Lionel Docksider which has smoke and an awful sounding whistle.
Agreed. At $50 they were great but at $100, no thanks.
If you want to pull postwar cars with your Beep you need a small drop of oil at each car wheel. They run nice but if you open it and see how small the motors are you may want to rethink how much load you want to pull with it.
Thaks for the advice, yeah, its probably about time I oiled up my postwar cars again. and $100 thats crazY! I got mine for $50
A few of the large train shops still have good prices on the Beeps.
My friend collected K-Line’s “12 Days of Christmas” freight cars and was given a Lionel wood sided, lighted Christmas caboose. This was her Christmas train. She wanted something different to pull her Christmas train. We looked at the Beeps online and she loved them. I got her one of the Christmas Beeps for Christmas. I had my doubts when I coupled it to her train, but it pulled it! [:O] This was on a GarGraves irregular oval with O54 curves on a hard wood floor.
She had gotten me a C&NW Beep for the same Christmas. I double headed the Christmas train with the two Beeps. Starting was much smoother with the two locos. After all, that is a lot of weight for a little switch engine! [:D]