Running With Newer Technology

My layout is in a semi-finished basement room, and I have a fair amount of track that's hard to access, so dust is a perennial problem. Over the past week, I had a track cleaning campaign on my main line, and I began testing the effect of new technology capacitors like the Digitrax Power Xtender, partly installed in the newer Walthers Mainline locos with helical cut gears. Here are some of the locos I've been running:

All three of the lead locos shown have Digitrax DH126 decoders with Digitrax Power Xtenders installed. In general, I find that a loco with a capacitor can bull its way over dirty track, pulling pretty much any type of track cleaner car behind it, and one or two passes over the main line will get things clean enough for ordinary operation. You can then go over stubborn spots with a bright boy or similar pad.

A second thing I've found is that Walthers Proto or Mainline locos with helical cut gears give you a lot more flexibility in speed matching consists. In the photo with KCS locos, the load loco is a Roundhouse AC4400CW, while the trailing loco is a Walthers Mainline SD50. The Roundhouse loco is much faster than the Walthers. In fact, I find that the Walthers locos run pretty slowly overall, but there's a lot of variation among them,

But helical gears have an advantage over the normal right-angle cut model train gears, since they will coast and won't lock up when power is cut off completely like right angle gears. This means that there's a certain amount of slop available for a faster loco to pull a slower one along. So I slowed the Roundhouse loco down a lot with CV 5 and did the best I could to speed the Walthers up on its speed curve. They don't match perfectly, but with the two coupled, the Roundhouse loco is able to "encourage" the Walthers loco to go faster due to its helical gears.

I find I've also made progress getting my Broadway DL-600s to run smoothly. I find that Broadway locos vary in how much they'll stall and hiccup on any but squeaky-clean track, but I'm finding that the DL-600s improv with running in. Below are shots of Missabe 52 running over the drawbridge between Manhattan Transfer and Jaques. I would not let this loco onto the drawbridge if I didn't have confidence that it wouldn't stall in the middle.