Arizona Connection Run - April 27, 2002 |
All three lines were running when the gang arrived. Brandy, Stan, Duncan & Debbie , Rodney & Janet. Stan drove all the way down from Prescott. I had the trolley line going and at that time, I had just hooked up the Lil Stainz to do the honors of doing some track cleaning...of course I was a little supsicious of the engineer. He was dirt cheap. I paid him in Scooby Snacks |
Stan brought a couple of battery powered items. The battery powered Porter ran on the mountain line for a solid 2 hours. Great stuff! On the left is the kitbashed Stomper. One AA battery gets you about 90 minutes of fun. |
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We ran the Mikado - booo! Couldn't get the sound system to work right in conjunction with the motor. Something is amiss in the 4th switch position...you get sound but the motor doesn't want to run. It ran but no sound - I shudder to think about having to send it to LGB of A. |
The Arizona Connection had their Spring Run at the LiZarD AtTiTuDe RailRoaD. It was noted that it was about 2 years ago when we had our first run in April of 2000. |
With the sun setting, it was time to do the SD45 lashup. We had 5 SD45s and a Bridgewerks 15 Amp transformer...what could be more perfect! So after discussing which engine should go first [how did that GN get in front of those lovely painted Santa Fe Units?], we rolled it on... Brandy had his GN in front, followed by Rodney's 2 Santa Fe's and then Duncan's two Santa Fe Warbonnets. What was mumbling under Brandy's breath about the color scheme of the Warbonnets? DOH! We had some derailment issues with the last SD45. After careful examination and much head scratching, we decided that the SD45 trucks should not have the compliant plastic pads in the front. Originally, they wre placed in the center but the more recent runs have placed them in the front. It was felt that the pad should be on the back axle of the truck. Let the front axle slop around a little bit to act like a pilot. Duncan's engine had the shims on the front [or leading] axle. Brandy rotated his truck so the pads are in the trailing axle of both trucks. |
We monitored the amp load. It was generally felt that each SD 45 should pull about 1.8 amps. At about 14 volts, we found all 5 units pulled about 10.5 amps. I did have 2 lighted cabooses and a few other lights attached to the track power. Also, one of the units had a Sierra sound system on. No smoke units were on but all the lights were. We kept pulling one engine off to see how much the amps dropped. We then put them all on again and then loaded up the train with all the rolling stock available. 36 cars but because my layout isn't that large, we were pulling the cars off the track coming out of the western section of the line. My line really can only handle about 35 cars at a time. Add 5 SD 45's and the cars just get pulled off the lower portion of the line. There is so much drag on the train from several curves. The engines just pull the cars off the eight foot curve I have at that end. |
