Hello All,
I have seen some comments in previous posts about the Ready Made Toy BEEPs. So what are some thoughts from owners? They look pretty interesting and OGT has a recent article on TMCC upgrades.
I have seen some pictures but have not been able to see the pick ups. I assume that there are two? Could someone post how far apart they are? With their overall size I fear I may get some stalling on Atlas #5 turn outs.
Thanks!
The P/U rollers are rite at 2 1/4 " apart. I have a TMCC Beep that I run at the club layout every once-n-awhile. I haven’t had much of a stalling problem, we have almost all Atlas turnouts, but even if it doesn’t stall you will notice a little bit of a stutter. But they are humourous. [:o)]
I’m on the fence with these. THey look cool but I don’t particularly like how they run. They definitely do a lot of stalling on my 022 switches. I pretty much run it on my xmas loop.
Put the money towards a Plymouth switcher (K-LIne) or A Lionel Docksider.
Mike S.
I don’t have a BEEP yet (money tight) but I have several Lionel Industrial Switchers, which are pretty similar in size. My suggestion from practice: remove the traction tire and add some additional weight to the loco frame or body (where space allows). Removing the traction tire will help immensely with the stalling problems. Adding weight will help compensate for loss of the traction tire. My Lionel Industrial Switchers (with much weight added) have no trouble stalling (even when they had e-units… I now run on DC current) and will easily pull a dozen cars (and more) with die cast trucks.
The rollers are a little close together, but I don’t think they could have made them any futher apart with the overall design. On the other hand they are almost a half inch further apart than my Lionel E-6 atlantic which cost 5 times as much as the beep. Mine goes through my Realtrax and Atlas switches OK, but you can’t crawl
through.
By the way, the beep only has one traction tire which probably helps maintain contact with the outside rails.
My Beep and Thomas both share this odd behaviour. Both stumble and hesitate around the tracks until they warm up, then they run smoothly. I’ve never experienced any problems with my Beep and switches.
Jim
Guys, it’s not just the closeness of the roller pickups. The actual wheelbase also plays a part. On these small short locos, even one traction tire can be an unintended effective insulator when running over switch tracks.
Again, I run a lot of small inexpensive locos on 027 track. I too had problems with lurching and stalling when running at slow speeds until I started removing traction tires and then adding weight. Later when I converted to direct DC power to the track and started running locos minus their circuit board reverse units, I wondered if I could reinstall traction tires and not have the lurching and stalling. Granted running with DC power is somewhat like using the e-unit lockout switch and running the loco in one direction. But even with DC power and running at slow speeds, I would still experience some stalling with the traction tires back on.
My thoughts from just practical experience and experimentation is that on the short locomotives, the traction tires will be a constant source of headaches if you wnat to run at very slow speeds. It’s not just the space between the roller pickups: the small wheel bases also play a big role in stalling and lurching. On the small locos, it just appears to be more important to have electrial flow through all four wheels, rather than just 3 out of 4.