And the rail material is? ■

In many ways a trolley train is like a belt conveyor. Look at the principles used in belt conveyor calculation, and adapt the same to your problem.

Alternatively go to your railway engineering library (these are a part of the Railway Department, but can be accessed by engineers doing research on a specific problem). They have extensive technical data on wagon technology. ■

What set up have you? So far you are running nylon, solid or tyred?, over rails???single or double flanged???made from steel. Look in HMC Brauer to see what sort of results you can expect. With 500kg wheel load with nylon on steel you should have quite a high rolling resistance. Your main problem is keeping the wheels on the rails. Forget tractive effort for now. ■

1 - AK Hoskins & MR Harris "Applied Mechanical Design"

2 - Machinery Handbook

There are lots more to choose from. ■

Hi James

You have two scenarios..one with bearings in good condition and the other with bearings failing.

Assuming the bearings are OK then you could apply the results of tests I did on rail wagons which was 30 pounds pull per ton of weight.

For nylon wheels this will approximately double I suppose.

Regards

LSL Tekpro ■