Please help with a newbie's commuter train (z scale)
Hey folks, pretty new to the hobby. I have bought some Rokuhan z scale track and an AZL F59PHI set because I live in an apartment and it fits fairly well with my space (4ft by 4ft). The train says it can handle 195mm curves and many places say these locomotives can pull a lot of rolling stock, but I'm having a lot of difficulty with it.
I've ran the locomotive for quite a while in both directions but can't get it to pull all 4 Bombardier cars it came with. It even struggles with 3. It suffers from a LOT of wheel slip with all 4 hooked up. I can hear the motor running and can see the wheels turning, but it hardly moves. Apart from needing the dial at 75% for the motor to kick in, it runs fine on its own.
On top of this, I'm finding that the coupler between the locomotive and the first car cannot, in fact, handle 195mm turns. The cars can, and the locomotive can, but because the locomotive has its coupler mounted to the shell it swings the connection well outside of the centerline and derails.
Should I give up on the idea of a passenger train with such limited space and stick with just freight? Is bumping up to 220mm curves the only way to save my commuter train? Or maybe I'm missing another option. Please help! I want to watch these lil things go round!