I visited the Chicago Science and Technology Museum a couple years ago. I somehow remember hearing that the locomotives were being controlled by radio controlled devices. Is there any truth to these rumors? How could I get my hands on one of these locomotives?
I don't know about the Museum's trains but that's basically all DCC is, a remote control for your trains. They probably have them being run by computer. The HO display at the B&O Museum is fairly typical and the hardware is visible at one end. It is programmed to replay the same set of four or five trains doing whatever all day long.
Are you talking about the display model railroad at the museum or full scale locomotives? They have been operating yard and industrial locomotives by R/C for years. Galesburg yard in Galesburg Illinois (BNSF) for example has been using SD40-2 to switch and hump all by R/C. Another example is the Bow NH power plant switcher. The locomotives are operated by a small box that looks a lot like a train transformer.
I am not going to pretend like I know what any of you are talking about. i just did a quick google search for DCC and this is what I have been searching for. I have just been googling "Radio controlled model trains" instead of "digital command control". I just read through it, great stuff. Jim- I was talking about the display model railroad (not the full scale)...but the full scale rocked too.
Wireless DCC is available as a retrofit from Tam Valley Depot and probably other vendors. Instead of connecting your DCC system to your track, you connect it to a transmitter. In your locomotive is a receiver that connects to the existing decoder. A lithium-polymer battery in the locomotive is used to power the receiver, decoder, and motor. There is no power on the tracks, and therefore dirty track and dirty wheels are no longer a problem. The biggest drawback, of course, is that each locomotive needs its own battery. The battery will probably not fit inside even an HO loco, so you would have to put the battery in a tender or other piece of rolling stock that is permanently connected to the loco. The battery must be recharged periodically. One way to look at it is that you are trading the inconvenience of track and wheel cleaning for the inconvenience of having to recharge the batteries. And of course you need a receiver and a battery for each locomotive, so there is added expense. On the plus side, your layout will not need any wiring -- no bus wires, feeders, or boosters. Hopefully, someone who has actually used one of these systems will drop in with some first-hand comments. I'd like to know how well it works. - Jeff
Phil-thanks for the link. The last time I posted a link to that site (in another topic), it was deleted by "someone". Radio Control has been used in real railroading for many years, garden railroading for quite a few years, "small scale" modelers are still worrying with dirty wheels/track, electrical problems, any number of other things. Yes, you do need to recharge batteries in a truly wireless operation but the benefits far outweigh the hassle of the previously mentioned "traditional" ways. True wireless-ness means just that, no wiring at all on the layout unless it is for lights, animations, etc. Those things are possible with battery power also. Yes, I promote radio control for small scale (HO and up) and it is indeed possible to run on batteries in all but the smallest HO locos, then you might need a "trailer car" for the equipment. I even know of one fellow who uses r/c and batteries in HOn3 and HOn30 locos. Most anything is possible. This isn't for everyone, but the option is available. W C Greene
I highly doubt the Museum of Science and Industry layout uses R/C. There's no point, because operators don't follow their trains. It would just be more technology to fail. I'm not even sure they use DCC; non-digital control could easily do what they need: run multiple trains on a main without collisions.
The Science and Industry layout predates DCC. The switching and dispatching has been computer controlled for years; as I understand it, the system was designed with the help of CTC pros of the Santa Fe. That said, they did a major revamp of that layout just a few years ago, so it could have been modernized. DCC, if you didn't get that from the website, requires no radio signal to transmit commands to locomotives. It encodes those commands in the track power, and the chip in the locomotive can read that code.
This is off the topic of the Chicago museum, but concerning radio controlled trains with batteries for power I can envision a different design. Put power on the rails to keep the battery charged up. No need to worry about power districts or many feeder wires because the voltage drop could be tolerated - the battery just charges slower. You also don't need to maintain the DCC signal strength. The batteries would still run down if many locos are running, exceeding the amperage of the charging unit, but it would extend total run time before a given loco battery needs recharging. Dirty track isn't a problem again because the control signal is via radio. Anyone else thought of this? I don't have the electronics knowledge to figure out necessary circuitry in the locomotive, but it seems that "through the rails" charging should be possible as opposed to pulling the battery out to place it in a charger. George v.
You still have power to the rails and need clean track/wheels and polarity issues to charge through the rails. My batteries are in the locos, I simply charge one up while I run another one. I just don't understand the "wires to the track" thing. Must be the old ways still in the thought process. I will go back and run my trains and keep quiet, at least here. Woodie
If you wanted to recharge on the layout, you'd need an apparatus that doesn't look out of place on a railroad, or else hidden somewhere, to charge the rechargeable battery. Otherwise you would need segments of powered rail on which the recharging battery can sit and be recharged, say in an auxiliary water tender on a Mallet, and say on a siding, or on a couple of designated ladder tracks in a yard, or on a ready track for locomotives in the same yard. Either way, we agree that the batteries will need recharging at times, and it really doesn't matter too much how that is accomplished, except that one should not have to remove the locomotive from the layout. Every time you handle them, you mar them slightly and you risk damaging them. So, I think the people who seem stuck on wiring the rails are merely insisting that they would want a mechanism that obviates having to physically lift the items off the rails to hook them up to something. I would also not want to have to make connections with small wires and plugs for that purpose. I know I would greatly favour a system that was hands-off.
If there is power in the track, why bother with batteries? Less stuff to shoehorn into an already small space. The loco is powered by the track, but the DCC signal would be over the air, separate from the power supply. That would make DCC work on less than perfectly clean rails and equipment, since it no longer risks having its signal broken up by power interruptions. A decent capacitor ahead of the the DCC module would smooth out the kinks in the power supply in case there is some dirt on the rails or wheels. If DCC were like this, I would jump on the bandwagon. As it is now, running control signals through the power supply gives me the heebie-jeebies from an electronics point of view (I work in electronics). Fault tolerance is quite low.
