Double heading live steam...

[CoggesRailway]

I will soon be getting a second live steamer to accompany my rc lady anne. I am interested in how one goes about controlling two locos at once. Ideally my next loco will be manual and I was wondering whether if I have the manual loco with the regulator only just open I could then control the pair via lady anne. If not how do people go about this?

 

[Casey's mate]

I like running double headed engines, it makes a great change to see. At the CFR we also run a lot of top and tails. It great to see - best on a cold day when the steam really shows. We normally run Paul's Roundhouse Billy with my Silver lady but they are both RC and we run them with two drivers. One loco could pull the other loco and 5 coaches no probs so long as the reverser is open. Opening the regulator a bit should work but stopping and starting could be a bit bumpy!

 

[dunnyrail]

I used to have a great party trick with my two Merlin locomotives. As both had a single Revrce/Accelerator servo it was dead easy to have two RC Units and drive both engines. If your loceys have two servo's to drive them, the answer is to remove the Spring Center on the RC Sender unit to the Revrce Servo. Open the reverce on both loco's to say forward. You can then with an RC unit in each hand open up the Acelerator servo's by the same amount for each loco. Bob is your preverbial and you have a new party trick.
JonD

 

[Sea Lion]

I will soon be getting a second live steamer to accompany my rc lady anne. I am interested in how one goes about controlling two locos at once. Ideally my next loco will be manual and I was wondering whether if I have the manual loco with the regulator only just open I could then control the pair via lady anne. If not how do people go about this?

Yes you have the right idea, ideally you would have the manual loco leading so as to keep the couplings under tension. Just party open the regulator on the manual loco and then control the entire train with the R/C loco, they will both happily chuff off together when you open the regulator on the R/C loco.

The daftest combination I once took part in was 3 r/c Lady Annes piloted by a fourth very old meths fired manual Lady Anne, it was at a show opposite the Roundhouse stand, I seem to remember the Roundhouse sales team couldn't quite decide what sort of expression to adopt as this quadruple header chuffed past. :-

Happy steamings,

John

 

[New Haven Neil]

I'm with John, it works OK doing that with a manual loco leading - I also run r/c double headers by sitting on our garden bench with a transmitter on either side of me, using each hand on a throttle! I can do this as I have removed the springs from the transmitter reverser sticks, I hate them!!

 

[CoggesRailway]

Thanks chaps great tips!

 

[Rhos Helyg Loco Works]

The daftest combination I once took part in was 3 r/c Lady Annes piloted by a fourth very old meths fired manual Lady Anne, it was at a show opposite the Roundhouse stand, I seem to remember the Roundhouse sales team couldn't quite decide what sort of expression to adopt as this quadruple header chuffed past. :-

Another odd one was two Lady Annes double-heading at Stoneleigh a couple of years ago, except the second one wasn't in steam and was being dragged around cold by the leading loco. And the point is...?

I have two slip-eccentric Roundhouse locos, both with single channel r/c on the regulator. I use the same transmitter for both locos, with one on the left stick and the other on the right. This makes double-heading very easy.