trains uphill?

Hi, I'm new to to lego trains.
Is it possible to have Lego (power functions trains) running up and down hill.
So you can have trains crossing over and under each other.
Has any one done this?

hello jevso

Welcome!

Yes it is possible and adds great effect to a display.

My first encounter with this was back in the 80s with 12V trains and the marvelous 7777 guide book.

The secret is a very gentle rise; you need a large display area.

Let's know how your project progresses.

Yeh to get a smooth incline and decline without slippage you need a rise of 1plate per track so three lengths of track gets you 1 brick in height.Experiment

I know it dates me and confuses the issue but with the old 4.5v you could get trains to climb one full brick per track, made for some exciting downhill runs on curves as they picked up a bit of speed.

Yeah I was disappointed by this also after growing up with 4.5V. Since the PF M and XL motors have a little more torque you might get away with a slightly steeper rise (maybe even the PF train motor) but I wouldn't want to be pulling a long train or heavy AFOL style carriages before testing thoroughly with lighter trains. If the motors heat up noticeable you probably don't want to do it too long for fear of burning them out.

The other issue is one of traction, the 12V and 4.5V train wheels and traction bands made far more contact since they used the whole top of the rails. The newer trains have far less contact area so will slip more readily all else being equal. There are a variety of different materials used for the traction bands on the modern trains, The red ones from the large drivers on the Emerald Night, the grey ones from the small wheels in the train sets (on all my localy bought trains) and some newer clear replacements for the grey ones (I've bought these through LUGBULK), which some Europeans report have much better traction.