50 car hopper train climbs my helix. Helix stress test.

ABA athearn F7 set with TCS wow sound climbs my helix with a 50 car hopper train in tow. I'm looking for first failure modes and how much margin I have on my more standard size trains.

[@JohnB9474]

Superb track laying and construction. Awesome job!

[@locolorenzo]

Smooth move, Ray! Your Reply to CraftedJR was very thorough, useful and interesting.🤗 You have no qualms about going the extra mile! 🚂Lawrence

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@locolorenzo thank you. Happy to share the details.

[@elsdp-4560]

Thank you for sharing. Very nice, F7's doing their job and sounding good as well.👍

[@coreybonsall]

B-E-A-utifal! Love the little click-clack of a long drag!

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@coreybonsall in this case it's a frog at standard junction with a big gap. It's never caused a derailment, and I love the sound. So, no plan on "fixing" it! Thank you!

[@jefflynnalex]

Great layouts start with great bench work! Great job. Personally, I've always stayed away from helixes in my designs; the thinking being that, for all the efforts toward prototype realism, helixes are jarringly unreal. They are, also, undeniably useful and pretty cool looking.

[@sparky107107]

one of my favorite places to watch on my layout is trains running the helix.

[@dundasjunctionmodelr.r-jam8267]

This looks very cool , impressive

[@georgiasunbelt]

More a stress test on this diesels 😂😂…cool run👍🏽

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@@georgiasunbelt thanks! They really didn't seem to be working that hard. I also ran it with 2 life like sd-7s that also seemed ok

[@leehanna4929]

Nice!

[@hoscalemodeltrains1221]

You have me considering building a helix!

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

Go for it! Just take your time, not as scary a people make them sound.

[@trainsontuesday]

OK, I'm impressed

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@@trainsontuesday 😆 that wasn't the goal, but thank you!!!

[@CraftedJR]

I'm assuming all of your freight cars are weighted with metal wheels and kadees?

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@CraftedJR metal wheels, yes everything on the layout has them, probably 90% are walthers metal wheel/ metal axle. Everything is kadee metal couplers - I like the whisker couplers the best but there are plenty of good old number 5's around. Weight... that's tricky. The roundhouse hoppers are insanely light. A lot of people have addressed this by gluing stuff into visible side of the car and.... I won't do that. I intend to run empties and I think it looks like hell. What I do is glue fine steel shot into the UNDERSIDE of the spaces created by the bays. This means I have a limit on how much I can add. So, they're weighted... more than stock, but still pretty light. They come in at about 3.2 Oz on average - the shot adds just shy of an Oz. The loads I make are also quite light, under an Oz- I don't want big differences in loaded vs unloaded trains operationally so the cars have to track good with our without the load. Since shooting this video I successfully added 10 more cars and pulled 60 cars up without issue. Realistically, trains will max out at 30ish in ops

[@darenhamill9881]

Hi

[@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061]

@darenhamill9881 hello!