Model Railway Traction Performance Measurements and Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to introduce measurements and analysis of a 1:8 scale model railroad in order to provide the possibility to use modern locomotive design methods in this application. Tractive force and vehicle speed are necessary for this analysis and therefore a measuring train car has been developed. On-board strain gage and a magnetic encoder are used to obtain the necessary data. Therefore a part of this paper is devoted to describing the usage of these sensors. Obtained data is processed, analyzed and also compared to a full scale railroad.