Garden Railway Forum

I ran at the Denver Garden Rwy's layout at the Colorado RR Museum yesterday. In addition to getting a few minor issues sorted out, a bad gas fill valve in the WD, and installation of brass wire into the water glasses of each engine, was able to get in several hours of running with my coal train cars with each engine.

Also found the need to replace the constantly feathering safety valve on the WD with a Wee Bee pop. I already have a Wee Bee pop installed on the Plantation, and it uses 1/2 the water consumption of the WD for the same run time.

The highlight of the day's running was to double head both engines under steam pulling the train set.
Serviced both engines together, lit them both off at the same time, brought each up to operating pressure and turned down the fire, Plantation came up first as it's a 40 psi engine where the WD is a 60 psi engine. When both were ready, opened both throttles and took off.
Each engine has link and pin couplers, so it was easy to see to get the lead engine (Plantation) to pull constantly against the trailing engine's (WD) road speed, and not get shoved along by the trailing engine. Made several dozen circuits of the track with no problems, until the WD ran low on water.

So it seems that successful operation of double headed manually run engines by one engineer is do-able on a fairly level raised live steam track.
However, on an undulating ground track I believe that R/C and 2 engineers with close coordination would be needed.

I've done a bit of double heading in my time, and two manual locos can work well up to grades of about 1 in 70. What however works very well is one radio and one maual loco, and it can still be done with a single driver. Open the reg on your manual loco a small amount, then set the radio loco off. Increase the regulator on the manual loco as neccissary. Admittedly does work best with a open cabbed loco....
Incidentally, LMSjools on here has done double heading with both locos working off the same transmitter, the advantages of multi channel 2.4Ghz radio control

laalratty - I wonder how he (LMSjools) accomplishes running 2 engines with one transmitter? Have engine #1 set up on left stick, and engine #2 set up on right stick?

Double heading manual locos? Easy! (from about half way through the video I think!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sZULzDS36M&feature=plcp

Yes, both the Mamod and Edrig are both working there!

I seem to recall a triple-header of oscillators followed by a triple head of manual Accys...

jabsteam:70357 wrote:laalratty - I wonder how he (LMSjools) accomplishes running 2 engines with one transmitter? Have engine #1 set up on left stick, and engine #2 set up on right stick?

No, with 2.4ghz you can map both locos to the same transmitter. Thus when you open the regulator on the transmitter both engines will open the regulator at the same time. I've done that before but it does take a little bit of synchro to get them working well in multiple.

dougrail:70370 wrote:I seem to recall a triple-header of oscillators followed by a triple head of manual Accys...

Yes, but this is running a double header by yourself, then again, by the time you'd run off inside to pack all your bits I ended up running Pheonix and Cando by myself anyway

I have done a Quintouple header with the TR locos. Tom Rolt was the only RC engine out of them all (The quad Header is picture 138 on the 16mm gallery) I find RC loco coupled directly to the coaches with the manual locos ahead of it works best. Its then just a case of balancing regulators. Have - a -Go gala this year will see us attempting the TR Sextuple header! That will certainly require some balancing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... IchY6is4nY
^^ This contains many Double headers. Some manual, some radio, some both.
Some of them are quite impressive.
Cheers.

Pendo Pilot:70373 wrote:

jabsteam:70357 wrote:laalratty - I wonder how he (LMSjools) accomplishes running 2 engines with one transmitter? Have engine #1 set up on left stick, and engine #2 set up on right stick?

No, with 2.4ghz you can map both locos to the same transmitter. Thus when you open the regulator on the transmitter both engines will open the regulator at the same time. I've done that before but it does take a little bit of synchro to get them working well in multiple.

Yup thats wot I did you just need to ensure the mechanical linkages form the servos are set up correct then spend a little time adjusting the trim.  ;)  :D
Hardest bit is keeping both in steam at the same time lol

For shunting etc just put locos into mid gear turn off the radio on the one to remain stationary whilst you move the other then vice versa. Switch both radios on to move off together again.

A friend took some pics, and here they are;

0-4-2 Plantation leading, 4-6-0 WD Baldwin trailing.
With yours truly - notice the "Official" Accucraft "Drivers" hat!