Coach Pickups

[shaung75]

I've just rewatched the Garden Railway series that was originally shown on Discovery and there was a feature on Bekonscot that I thought was a brilliant idea:

They mentioned that power was picked up through the coaches and fed through to the engine, which on a rake of just four coaches is an additional eight pickup wheels per rail. Has anyone tried doing anything similar with their setup as this looks like it could massively improve reliability, or is it just overkill and no-one has felt the need for it?

Shaun

[TheQ]

I've seen it done with small o8 shunters and 0-4-0 steam locos because they have problems with pick up over points. In those cases they had a small wagon permanently attached with a couple of fine wires underneath to pass the current.

With carriages first you have to pick up the current on a bogie, then pass it to the carriage, then pass it to the Loco. You'll need some very fine flexible wire and it would probably best to have a tiny plug and socket between the loco and the carriage.

Oh and a lot of older stock have plastic wheels so you may need to change them for metal tyred wheels.

But I see no reason for it Not to work.

[pppp]

Bekonscot is my inspiration.

The Coaches pick up is something I was actually thinking about yesterday, as I believe that is key to the success of the trains at Bekonscot. Here is what I thought would have to be done, but I don't have much experience in model trains or electronics I am just a gardener. I have never taken on a project like this before, so its just my theory on how to go about it.

Step 1. Take a coach with metal wheels, or added Hornby R8234 metal wheels

Step 2. Next up you need to take an axle, make one side live, the other side insulated. -->

(video of coach lighting) and repeat for the other axel, so you have power from both lines. This section of video covers how to do this perfectly.

Step 3. Then add wires to each axle, and head those two towards your engine. This involves drilling holes in the coach I think.

Step 4. Your engine will need wires soldered onto each side, probably from the pick up wires or wher ethe pick up wires join the motor. Theese new wires then will need to head out the back of the engine

Step 5. Connect engines wires to Coach wires, either plugs that can plug in and out(do these exist?) or make some kinda of temporary connection - or have it permanently connected so the coach is always connected to the engine 24/7.

That gives you one set of pick up wheels that drive the engine. If you repeat step 2, you get more wheels.

HORNBY R8234 - metal wheels

http://www.dccconcepts.com/catalogue/e/flicker-free-pickup-springs-and-pickups - pickup springs

That a lot of work for adding not much pick up, and to have the problem of connecting all that up having it always connected.

Most Garden railway engineers do so to run their collection of beautiful trains on longer layouts. They would not want to butcher engines and coaches to make them work better outdoors and they may find their engines work well enough with out the mod.

Just my thoughts, would love to hear what others think. This is something I would be willing to try and build if others think its a feasible plan.

[mick]

In theory it's a great way to overcome the drawbacks of intermittent power collection, and for loco's and coach rakes that can be left permanently coupled together I see no reason why a similar method couldn't be adopted in OO gauge. In practice, if you are not able to leave any such converted coaches and loco's coupled together then it may well become a bit tedious, not to mention a little awkward, coupling and uncoupling at the beginning and end of each session. I guess in our case we could possibly get by with adapting just a coach or two at each end of a rake rather than an entire rake.

I'ts possibly something that should be looked into more. All that's needed is current pickup from each coach and a simple method of coupling vehicles together that passes current between each vehicle. It shouldn't be that difficult but remember, it's already taken many, many years and we still don't have a 100% reliable plain tension lock coupling.