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Re: Central Valley 5' Arch Bar trucks.

Tim O'Connor
 

Gene

The track is laid on aspen "craft wood" along the back of my
work bench. One end is not nailed down at the end, so I can
shim it upwards 1/2" to 3/4" easily to make a grade about 3 feet
in length and then the car rolls on the level after that. There
is no point in a constant gradient -- I only want to see how
far each car rolls freely relative to other cars. I use this
same track for bench testing locos and DCC programming.

Tim O'Connor

Tim,

What sort of grade is your inclined track?

I have about 18 feet of track on an incline of approximately 1 1/2%.
If I let a car go on that grade it is going fast enough to knock the
coupler off for sure and maybe do even more damage. Of course, having
the track end at a solid wall may contribute to the damage.

My point really is that a 1 1/2% grade is way too steep for any meanful
test unless there was a really long - 100 feet? - level track for the
car to coast to a stop.

Another party to this discussion made the point that testing the truck
alone and testing trucks with a car might yield different results.

Gene Green
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