Ok

Yesterday I tried a Wurttermberg 34112 + Pr G. 8 from a starter set which had a class 85 and 4 thunderbox coach and 4 freight wagons,when I tried double heading when the G. 8 pushes,the tender on the Wurttemberg C leaves the tracks and CS1 comes to a stop light

I use double heading with two 60901 decoder locos or two MFX locos.

Would changing over the Delta chip or faulhaber motor to MFX mode work better when double heading?

I feel enough has been said without me adding anything to it.

Putting your inquiry aside, there are certain rules and options one has to consider and include, before taking a plunge of trying to use a double header.

Even with 2 identical locos you still can experience a different speed at low, medium or high level.

I have Roco & Märklin locos and I don't even think or trying to match their speed ranges because they have different gearing.
It is very rare to find a combination of the type of locos you're trying to doubel head.
You sometimes could see freight locos have been used for passenger trains.

Your combination would be a 1 off and only you would be able to match, if ever, the same speed, regardless of motor or decoder.



John

When two modern locomotives are coupled together, it is less of an issue, than when coupling two steam engines or two locomotives with cars/coaches inbetween. Even if the trailing lok (like in klarinettmeister's example) is a little slower, this will put a little strain on the other engines motor and coupler, but should not be too much stress for it to bear. When creating, say a DB Regio consist with a bunch of coaches sandwiched between two 143/112/146 loks, if one lok is slower than the other, this can exert tremendous force on the intermediate coaches, which will cause them to tilt and potentially derail.

I once experimented with using a Ae 6/6 as a pusher on a freight train, like they do on the Gotthard. It was extremely problematic for the following reasons:

1) When train entered signal (stop) zone, pusher kept pushing = FAIL
2) When train entered incline, pusher did not decelerate like main lok = FAIL
3) When train reached peak of hill, main lok would accelerate, pusher would cause drag = FAIL

Interesting to note that when I used a Maerklin lok with the motor (rotor) removed, it still caused a drag on the consist, causing a few lightweight 2 axle freight cars to tilt/tip in curves.

I did notice that it worked better using a Roco Lok with the motor removed.

@Klarinettmeister:

In prototype, are the RC4s always arranged in tandem so that is says "Green Cargo" over the two loks or is it common to see either "Green Green" or "Cargo Cargo" as well

Regards,

Mike C

I have to mention that it's probably good that the new Marklin TGV (or even the old ICE-1) only have one motor unit powered - not only that it makes the set cheaper, it also avoided all the problems mentioned here - especially with their rather delicate couplings.

Even with the two BR189s with the more precise SDS motor - being set up at exactly the same parameter - they both are running at slightly different speeds in the same speed settings.

With DCMs, it's even worse, as even when you got the speed to synchronize in the first instance, over time, one or both of the loks would begin to drift from the original settings and running uneven again.

Not saying that double consists can't be done - they can. But for many, it would either be too much hassle or you would risk damaging your loks and/or wagons.

Mike. The answer is no. 37415 consists of 2 totally different RC4 locos and has only been seen together once, at the 150th year celebration. I think they were painted only for that particular occassion, because none of the other RC4 are painted that way. 37412 and 37414 represents how they normally look like. I´ve seen one of the prototype locos from 37415. It looked strange, therefore I use both loks together.

BTW, I have the same experiences as you do, now that you mention it. I was converting one RC-loco and removed the motor and used another RC-loco that pulled. It was very heavy and I couldn´t have many cars because they are not very heavy. I tried the typical Swedish SMS-train. Loco-cars-loco which are sometimes used because it takes time to change the locomotive from one end to the other end. One typical is: loco-3 cars-loco.


/David