Sunday, January 6, 2013

Testing the running qualities of the Eureka HUB set

I just got my 5 car Eureka HUB set and as they roll extremely well I decided to give them a running trial behind several steam locomotive models.

I tested the following:

Eureka C38
Austrains C36
Austrains C35
and Trainorama C32.

I ran the HUB set with each locomotive from my lower staging yard across the full main line to my upper staging yard.

All locomotives hauled the HUB set with ease up my 1 in 40 grades some of which are on 30" (760mm) curves.

I took a video of each climb up the last long 1 in 40 bank which has a curve right at the top end which can usually bring a locomotive to it's knees if it is overloaded.

The trains were run on DCC at speed steps ranging in the 40 - 50s of 128 possible steps so perhaps at around half power equivalent for DC (if you can really say that with DCC). Basically they were ran at a slow to medium speed to ensure that they weren't using momentum gained on the flat sections of the layout to coast up the grades.

Here is the video, you can see that each locomotive is not having any problems with hauling the HUB set. I believe that each locomotive would have handled the 7 car HUB set as well.






5 comments:

Gary Laker said...

Not sure if it was the video Ray but the sound from the 32 and the 36 seemed a lot "better" than the 38 and the 35 ???
Which decoders in what ?? (expt 38!)
Any derailing probs ??

Ray P said...

Gary

The 32 and 36 have Soundtraxx Tsunamis and the 38 and 35 have QSI.

The Tsunamis have an equaliser and also reverbaration can be applied to various sounds, so in effect you can adjust the sound a bit.

I did have some derailments with the HUB set but found that I had to fix check rail distances on two of my handbuilt points and an old (1980's) Shinohara point.

I checked the wheel back to back and found a small number which were tight on my gauge so I removed the bogies to access the wheels and gave them a slight outwards twist and checked again, very easy.

Ray

Gary Laker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Ray,
I am impressed with the appearance of the number boxes in your diesel locos, especially the 44 class. Have you done anything to enhance these?

Ray P said...

Anon

The number boxes on my Trainorama 44 have indeed been modified.

The 44 could have had back lit number boards but the clear was painted black and then white numbers were applied.

I scraped the numbers and black paint away then give the boards a milky wash of acrylic paint followed by reverse numbers I had printed on laser safe decal sheet. Paint around the edge of the box and there you are.

I also rewired the lights adding a LED to separately light the number boards on a DCC function.

Ray