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Question to those who know more than me.

I believe that I read that O Scale subway cars are designed differently than other passenger coaches in that they are heavier and have additional electronics, etc.  I'm looking at coupling two 4-car sets together to make a prototypical subway consist of 8 cars or more, so my thought has always been to have power cars at positions 1 and 5 (or 1 and 6 in the case of a 10-car train) with both power cars facing the forward direction.  Then I saw this YouTube video recently  https://youtu.be/bHE0bw8oX8w by DjsOgaugeTrains in which he ran the power cars at each end of an 11-car World's Fair set.  I always thought having the power cars at each end would lead the middle cars to buckle, but apparently that's not the case, having the second power car in the middle would lead to buckling and derailing.

Can someone explain this to me?

Thanks.

Last edited by Amfleet25124
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What about running one power and one end car, and buying two more intermediate cars (they are still out there on Ebay from time to time) to make up an 8 car set?

Joe,

My concern with that would be any strain being put on the power car to pull 7 other heavy cars.  Subway cars are heavy due to the electronics, and each of them way more than any freight car (Husky stacks and AutoCarriers are basically hollow shells that weigh a lot less).

As long as the subway route was level, there are not too many curves, and the train was run gently, I think the power car is capable (although I don't have any empirical evidence to back this up.) But I would be concerned if there were any grades or sinuous curves adding to the load.

Then there's the unrelated question of having enough room to build a station platform long enough for 8 cars anyway!

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