Re: Wheelslip, Can you actually feel it?

Ffestiniog railway has 0-4-4-0 'double' engines with a steady line grade of 1 in 80. There are two throttles, one for each bogie, although they are arranged so that opening or closing them together is easy. The rails are often wet and greasy and an amount of slipping on restarts from stations is fairly normal.

Welsh Highland railway has 2-6-2+2-6-2 Garratt locos and fairly long stretches of 1 in 40 grades, also often wet and greasy. There is a single throttle which feeds both sets of cylinders, so if one bogie starts to slip it takes and wastes the lion's share of the steam. At first these Garratts, with a tractive effort of 20,000 lb on two foot gauge could be difficult to start without wheel spin on the steeper gradients, but the drivers (engineers) got used to the engines' quirks and their reliability and time keeping became totally dependable.

I think it's mostly down to the loco crews experience and intelligence.

Bob GARTSIDE