Ancestors

Toot

Written by dorotaC on 2025-01-21 at 20:57

Model train fans, a question to you.

How do cars work in models of towns?

There's the Faller system, but info is scarce. How is stopping controlled? Changing the path at an intersection? Blinking lights? Where does the power come from?

Are there any photos and videos showing all that? Ideally in English so I can help my friends nerd out :)

[#]askfedi #technology #trains

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Descendants

Written by LovesTha🥧 on 2025-01-22 at 00:21

@dcz A former colleague was getting pcbs printed with coils in them to use as linear motors, the cars had a small magnet in them and then they'd move around the model controlled by the linear motor. As long as he kept a little distance between each vehicle he could keep track of everything in software.

That was a solution for very small scale.

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Written by AndiAndi on 2025-01-22 at 06:37

@dcz used old style Faller cars ~10 years ago for visualising a project. Cars had battery, motor and a nc reed relay, driving along this magnet band on their own. Coils next to the track could open the reed relay and stop the car, when powered. Intersections would just have short portions of the track without magnetic band, so crossing tracks would not interfere. Coils at intersections toss the magnetic wiper to the side for turning. Hope this gives you some keywords, can look for photos later.

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Written by AndiAndi on 2025-01-22 at 19:41

@dcz sorry, could not find the photos, which is quite unsettling... https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/rightlines-article/faller-car-system.html this gives quite a good insight as it seems. Also, views from below and opened cars. Interesting is, we used magnetic band instead of the metal wire - not sure why. But we also realized crossroads with servo motors, so we could turn into both direction. But that was all ye olde analog stuff, nothing fancy that could turn on headlights or something. That ultrasonic stuff sounds interesting indeed.

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Written by dwagenk on 2025-01-22 at 21:09

@dcz the Miniatur Wunderland seems to use the faller system: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IVY5K-lcTjg

But for the formel1 track they use PCBs as linear motors:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=swpPfozKLNM

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