Hello,I want to know if you can run Proto 2000 Locomotives together with Athearn or Atlas Units,can they run smoothly together & does this have anything to do with Speed matching???,For example:
I want a Proto 2000 SD45 CSX “grey ghost” & and in the future i might get a Athearn CSX C44-9W or CW44AC or **Atlas C40-8,**will any of those locomotives types from those brands run smoothly together???,i want to know because i dont want any problems when i put them together.The whole point is can Proto 2000 Locomotives run with Athearn or Atlas Units???
If you’re running DC, while they may individually run smoothly, the speeds at a given voltage may vary widely. If you have DCC, then yes,certainly, if you program the decoder properly.
I run a number of different brands and designs of locomotives, with wildly different speed curves and maximum speeds. As long as there is no wheel slip, they can all work together. Control is analog DC, MZL system.
The key, in my opinion, is to run at prototypical speeds. Mismatched locos that don’t cooperate at 12 volts run well together at my 70 (scale) kilometer per hour track speed at nine volts or so.
I will admit that my experience is no guarantee that yours will be similar. The only thing you can do is experiment.
The newer versions of those will likely run somewhat similar. But the older Protos, I’m not so sure about being the same. I like to put my faster units on the front btw.
There will be speeds where they will run closer together and speeds where they won’t run so well together. So even if you don’t use DCC it makes sense to speed match to the extent you find the sweet spots. They don’t have to be perfect.
so are the Proto 2000 engines mismatched with athearn or atlas engines??? and the power transformer i use to operate my trains is a old Life-Like transformer that gives 12 or 20 volts i believe,is good enough for the locomotives to run smoothly???
I’m trying to figure out because i had a Life-Like BN GP38-2 (no proto 2000) & i tried running it with my BLI AC6000CW but it didn’t work,the BN engine took off first but in the Opposite direction and i’m afraid the Proto 2000 engines might act the same way with a Athearn or Atlas but just to be sure will they run in the Same direction together???
If it is a standard Life-Like GP38 it will have only one powered truck and a pancake motor.
A Life-Like Proto 2000 GP38 has a flat can motor and dual flywheels.
The Proto 2000 version should run fairly well with an Athearn or Atlas loco, but I wouldn’t bet on the pancake motored version. Pancake motored locomotives run faster than locos with flat can motors and flywheels.
Athearn, Atlas, and Life-Like Proto 2000 locos should run in the same direction. If you have a loco that is running in the opposite direction, it is wired backwards and can be fixed.
Yes the pancake motored version run fast,very fast but Thank you for letting me know and just in case,how do i fix the backwards Wiring inside the engine???
I’ve found that locomotives from different manufacturers run at the same speed at the same setting on the controller. What I do is match locomotives from the same manufacturer. Even then, if you try matching the speeds on an older Athearn blue box with a newer RTR or a Genesis, good luck. Since you’re running DC, you’ll just have to experiment.
without speed matching it will be a crap shoot. May work may not, as others have said try out different sets and see, may have to switch engines around until you get a set that works ok. and maybe you won’t be successful. doesn’t cost anything to try though.
Since you are running DC, just turn the back wards running engine around. Most are wired the same way and if you turn the loco around it will run in the opposite direction.
Richard, I would not run a Pancake motor engine with the others. Main reason is the Pancake engine has traction tires, and grip very well. It will drag the other engines, and the motor in them are not durable. When I got started I was buy the cheap Life Like and had more than one engine cook.
Pancake to pancake is OK, and like another poster said, put the faster one in front.
Engines of better quality will hold up much better if there speeds are not matched. Again, faster in the front.
Far as switching the wiring. Where the wires connect to the motor, reveries them. You will need a soldering iron.
They ought to. The little motors tend to run at about the same speed under the same load. The gear ratios are limited by geometrical considerations (like will it fit inside the locomotive). The geometry is the same for all makers.
In practice no two locomotives run at exactly the same speed, one is always faster than the other. As long as the difference in speed isn’t too great, they run just fine coupled together. The faster locomotive will attempt to pull (or push) the slower one. Nothing wrong with this, the couplers are plenty strong enough to resist the pulling or pushing forces and the locomotives are heavy enough to stay on the track despite a bit of pushing on the tender.
I will confess that on my layout the locomotive consists are usually all from one maker. Say a matched ABBA set of Alco FA2’s or an ABA set of F units, so I don’t have that much experience double heading mixed makes, but I don’t see how it differs fundamentally from double heading same make locomotives, other than the speed differences might be larger.
Usually the locomotive consist is locomotives of the same general size. You might have derailments on sharp curves if a short locomotive is coupled to a long one. Never had that problem, since I never double head a yard switcher with an E8.
If a locomotive is running backwards to the rest of the fleet, it is miswired! Positive on the right hand rail (analog DC) = motion away from the viewer, whether you are looking at the cab windows or the south end of a northbound tender.
If only one loco is running on the opposite direction, check to see what has to be done to swap connections to the motor brushes. Each loco is wiring specific. Since I don’t own any U. S. prototype diesels, I will leave that to someone who does.
If you want to see if they’re close enough, simply run one behind the other. If one is significantly faster than the other I wouldn’t run them together. If you only lose an inch or so per foot of travel you’ll probably be ok.
I have no problem running my two SDP40F’s together. One is on an Athearn blue box chassis rebuilt to the newer hex shaft design and the other is on a Proto 2000 E6 chassis that was chopped to fit under the SDP40F shell. Both are fitted with Digitrax DZ125 decoders and were easily speed matched under the 3 step speed table in the Digitrax decoder manual. I used the slower unit as a baseline and adjusted the numbers of the faster unit downward until they both ran at the same speed.
I have been a model Railroader since 1960 and back in my DC cab control days before I switched to DCC I wanted to do the same thing. I used the following method for double heading trains and it worked for more than 25 years so Good luck.
Your best bet if you have no plans to go with DCC is to buy 2 of each engine from the same manufacturer and run them in pairs even then there is no guarantee it will be trouble free.
The chance of having two engines from two different manufactures running together without harming one if not both is 1 in 20 for them to even come close . There will always be one of the engines that is pulling harder then the other. This can cause the engine working the hardest to burn itself out or worse short out the power supply or the windings in one or both motors.
If your running two like engines from the same manufacture your chance of them running very close to the same speed at the same time is at least 90% better.
The only other thing you can do is, when you buy the engines your wanting to team up together run them on two tracks one next to the other hooked up to the same power supply and place one engine on each track and then run them in a race when you find a pair of engines that run close to the same speed at the same time team them up and if one is faster than the other make it the lead engine.
This is what I did for more than 25 years. After that I started experimenting with early DCC and now using DCC I have no trouble running 5 engines at the same speed control in a single 100 car train.