Can locomotives handle more weight


ICG/SOU

HO & O (3-rail) trainman
I just installed ditch lights on two of my Athearn wide cabs (one an SP Dash 9 and the other a BSNF AC4400CW), and while I was in there, I added weight where I could fit it, because I've seen several derailments and wheel slippage on other locomotives that I could attribute to weight.

I was able to add 2 1/2 ounces to the SP unit, and 3 or 4 to the BNSF unit. What I've found now is that the SP unit's decoder overheats, and the BNSF unit will derail occasionally (just go up and over the frog).

For the guys who have added weight to their locos, do you have a rule of thumb on what you put in there, or a limit to what you have in there? One thing I didn't think of on the BNSF unit is to check wheel gage, but even then, I figure both problems were due to too much weight.

Thanks in advance.
 
Some certainly can, I guess it depends on the manufacturer. For the overheating engine, I suspect that binding is more of an issue than weight. Either the weight's making the axles bind in the trucks or when you put it in, something got cockeyed in the drive train.

That said, my old Life-Like F units always heated way up, because they had more weight than the motor was designed for.

The BNSF unit may just need the wheel gauge tampered with.
 
I ended up taking out 2 ounces out of the BNSF unit. The wheelsets were in gage, but the derailment problem ended.

The SP unit isn't overheating, but had a short (I miscounted the number of flashes). I've yet to run the locomotive again.
 
In the past some loco's needed more weight, the early Stewart's AS16, AS616 with Athearn drives were terrible under weighted. One time our club had a pulling contest, so I took an Athearn SD40T-2 and loaded it in with brass slugs inside, it was able to single handedly pull 80 cars around our layout which was 80' x 60' loop with peninsula's that ends up around 6 scale miles.
 



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