I picked up a few hopper cars (Bowser 100T types) from a hobby shop's "consignment" shelf.  While I definitely need the car type for my operations, the problem with these cars is that a previous owner used some kind of chemical to glue in the otherwise press-fit weight retainers.  (Probably Testor's cement.  Heck, I used to use that stuff for everything myself!  SPARINGLY, in my case; not so much with these hoppers...)

When running over tall steel trestles and other larger bridges, how often were such tracks on the level vs on grade, especially in situations where the railroad was climbing a grade in the surrounding territory.

Are there any operational implications for our models (I am in N Scale) of having the track on grade? I have a spot where I plan to have a 4 foot steel trestle in a layout plan, and really need the 1 inch height gain I could get by keeping the track on its 2% grade over that length.

I am having a problem with a locomotive that I can't reason out, and I'm hoping more experienced minds will have seen it before, or be able to help me track down the issue.

I have an older lifelike GP9 I purchased used. It has a qsi Quantum diesel sound decoder (from what looks like a factory install).

When the unit has it's direction reversed, it shorts out the entire DCC (NCE) system. It has had this problem since I owned it, and it had the same issue on my Easy DCC system, so I do not believe it is related to the control system.