Automobilia - Moving cars for your railway

[David Palmeter]

Madurodam, a very large 1:25 scale outdoor architectural and transportation display in Holland, has operating, self charging vehicles. At about 38 seconds into this video:

you can see the battered Chrysler stretch limousine approach a plate in the road with a red sensor light and two contacts. It stops when it is over the plate to be recharged. This system has been in operation for many years and was apparently the inspiration for the original Faller Car System.

 

[Zerogee]

I've got this one: Trabant 601

At this moment only available in beige and without the roofrack. The brand is Lucky/Road Legend

OK, thanks Ed. That pale blue Trabbie with the roofrack is the exact model that I have, a Yat Ming model but branded as "Road Signature" rather than Road Legend.

Good to know that you can convert even these quite small cars, like that and the Beetle.

Jon.

 

[David Palmeter]

For those of you (PhilP) interested in building your own large scale operating vehicles, Willibald Pichler , did an interesting indoor layout and I found several videos on YouTube and corresponded (via Google Translate) about some details:

Published on Dec 19, 2015

Besseres Video vom Traktor auf meiner LGB Anlage.

With a wire that is admitted into the roadway. Rest of Faller Car only changed for my size. LG Willi P.

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Published on Jan 23, 2017

Movement animates the LGB model railway. Approximately 5 minutes.

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Published on Mar 9, 2017

LGB Anlage mit 3 Achs Schotter LKW und VW Bus Feuerwehr und kleiner Puch Wagen.

LGB system with 3 axle gravel truck and VW bus fire service and small Puchwagen .

How do you stop and start the vehicles? I do that with reed contacts and sensors. is controlled via the steering magnet. Do you like it?

Yes!

 

[Ed de Bruijn]

The original Car system in Madurodam was chain driven. The expressway had a groove in the middle and beneath it a chain running. It could only go straight and at the end the cars disapeared under a bridge (as far as I remember). The last time I visited Madurodam was in the seventies, when I was in my teens. The Faller Car System was introduced in 1978. That is the system with the magnet for steering. Faller AMS was available in the 60's.

Once Willy discovered AutoMobilia shortly after I introduced it in January of 2016 we had a lot of contact. The truck in the video come from me and was adapted by Willie to his layout. His curves are very tight and the truck originally has a fixed real axle. The friction was too big to go around the bend (no differential) so he cut the axle and now only one wheel is propelled by the motor.

Ed

 

[PhilP]

David and Ed - Thank you both for the information.

For indoor use:
I had thought about adapting a 'toy' I had as a child. - Matchbox Motorway.

This had track (road) sections a little like those for top racing cars, but you had a long-length of spiral spring, which you fed into the groove in the roadway, once laid.
A hut had a motor and gears, which a large final gear-wheel drove the spring round the roadway.
They supplied plastic pegs, with a flat 'plate' at one end, and some silver-foil stickers with a hole in. - You used these to mount the pin on the bottom of any Matchbox vehicle. The pin dropped into the slot, and the moving spring dragged the car(s) round the roadway.

You could put several cars on at the same time. Hence 'Motorway' rather than 'Racetrack', I suppose?

It was a little noisy, as there was a 'whooshing sound' from the spring travelling round in the track.


If you did use it for racing.. A car with a towing-hitch, would allow a fine piece of wire to be added at the rear.. Your car would then not spin off the track at speed!

 

[David Palmeter]

"The original Car system in Madurodam was chain driven. "

It is interesting that Madurodam has both systems running today:



The chain drive system above cleverly runs the left lane chain a bit faster than the right chain as happens in normal traffic flows. The chains are constant loops so the vehicles do a 180 at each end and return running in the opposite direction.



The "mag steer" at Madurodam is apparently not a simple "permanent magnet following a buried wire" system. In my correspondence with the Madurodam tech folks, I was told:

- “We do not work with magnets, but with an induction system. Our vehicles are seeing electronics that the magnetic field creates a thread that has been put on an alternating detect.
The strength of the field is in the electronics compared to a 'eikwaarde' (a friend told me that ‘eikwaarde’ means ‘a fixed setting’), if the field is weaker than the 'eikwaarde' controls the steering motor to the wire and the breastplate by the vehicle freshening field of the wire is sent.”

From that reply, I assumed that their buried wire has a constant voltage applied which creates a constant magnetic field around the wire. When the vehicle tries to leave the wire, an electronic signal in the vehicle detects the weaker magnetic field and actuates an electric steering motor which returns the vehicle to the strongest magnetic path, keeping the vehicle on the road above the wire.

It even works well enough to control off road vehicles:



Interesting concept!

 

[Zerogee]

David and Ed - Thank you both for the information.

For indoor use:
I had thought about adapting a 'toy' I had as a child. - Matchbox Motorway.

This had track (road) sections a little like those for top racing cars, but you had a long-length of spiral spring, which you fed into the groove in the roadway, once laid.
A hut had a motor and gears, which a large final gear-wheel drove the spring round the roadway.
They supplied plastic pegs, with a flat 'plate' at one end, and some silver-foil stickers with a hole in. - You used these to mount the pin on the bottom of any Matchbox vehicle. The pin dropped into the slot, and the moving spring dragged the car(s) round the roadway.

You could put several cars on at the same time. Hence 'Motorway' rather than 'Racetrack', I suppose?

It was a little noisy, as there was a 'whooshing sound' from the spring travelling round in the track.


If you did use it for racing.. A car with a towing-hitch, would allow a fine piece of wire to be added at the rear.. Your car would then not spin off the track at speed!

I remember having a set of that as well, Phil! A slightly eccentric piece of design, but as you said, allowing almost any diecast car of a suitable size to be "run" on the roadway..... I seem to recall it actually worked reasonably well, apart from the noise and an occasional tendency for the pins/stickers to pull off the underside of some cars - nowadays with more modern adhesives and sticker technologies it would probably work much better....

Jon

 

[PhilP]

Thanks Jon..

Thank you for the extra information David. - Substitute the chain, for the Matchbox spiral spring, and you have basically the same system.

Obviously, you always had to use all the track-pieces, else (even though a spring) said spring would not fit.

 

[David Palmeter]

His curves are very tight and the truck originally has a fixed rear axle. The friction was too big to go around the bend (no differential) so he cut the axle and now only one wheel is propelled by the motor.
Ed

It is great that you have spent the time to develop a complete system, Ed. Very impressive.

Here is a thought about adding a differential - there are a large number of inexpensive 1:24 scale radio controlled models and most of them have compact power module which includes the motor and a working differential. This 1:24 Cadillac is the first (and, so far, only) 'mag steer' conversion that I have done. It will run on just one AA battery and works well in tight corners. The power module is sprung to provide a rear suspension, so can be easily separated and could probably be adapted to another chassis:

 

[MaximDeDonder]

I bought a new Automobilia vehicle so time for a new video!