Tiny pots (4mm scale conductor rail supports)

It's about time someone came up with this excellent solution.

_{(Liking RussE's new avatar)}

ps: RussE, would just like to add re: your "siggie" logo - conductor rail. Well worth watching it for a few seconds to get the effect. :-)

No one does, and I strongly doubt the mainstream market would even contemplate the idea. Sprung tube bogies will be available at some time in the future from Bill Bedford Models, and prototypes of these are shown here, but work has not yet commenced on the conductor rail shoe pickups. When we get some time after progressing some trackwork, attention will turn to some surface stock bogies, which will have a more conventional outside-bearing spring configuration (there were a number of very difficult space constraints in the tube bogies).

Both styles of bogie are intended to use a modified 'american' pickup system via alternate metal-framed bogie frames. This avoids all wheel tyre pickups. Transmission circuits will need to be bussed throughout sets.

Conductor rail pickup is proving contentious. Personally I favour gravity acting shoes, but they are a long way off proving as yet. Space for the negative shoes is a problem especially, and I'm not that keen on hanging them off the gearboxes.

I'm very tempted by DCC, but the current technology is somewhat crude, and singularly unsuited for automatic block working, which is for me the essence of the LT system. I don't feel this can be replicated adequately in DCC unless and until decoders can accept dynamic addressing. My present plans are therefore to retain d.c. traction control, probably based on MERG BC3 controllers, and hopefully via the conductor rails if the pickup shoes prove to be reliable enough, and to use the running rails for track-circuiting and maybe high frequency lighting. Conductor rail pickup however in models is problematic - unlike the prototype, models do not have sufficient momentum to take them over conductor rail gaps. In the meantime, I'm keeping my options open, but will wire all 4 rails and take it from there.

I set the cycle time of the animation to 12s.

Russ

P.S. (for Colin, whose post I have just read) - the current-carrying capacity of pickups, whether wheel tyre or conductor rail shoe, is not a problem. A decent drive bogie transmission adequate for a 4-car set should not need to consume much in excess of 200mA.

As everyone else has said, no-one.

There was an article in - I think - British Railway Modelling several years ago about someone who was scratchbuilding second-gen EMUs (508s, iirc), and was modifying bogies from Lima Cl156s (a nice enough model in its own right) for use with a third-rail.
The process involved a lot of chopping bits off, mounting a dummy plasticard shoebeam, and mounting an elongated loop of wire with copper (iirc) shoes on either end, which was then soldered to the bogie crossmember. Forgive the poor description, but ... it was a long time ago.

Based on this, I don't see why you couldn't mount a centre shoe... bit of wire bent in an open V-shape to provide some springiness, soldered at one end for pickup, resting against something at the other ... you'd probably want to take outside and centre pickups off alternate bogies to make things a little less complex, but it should be reasonably achievable.

...

Personally, I'd stick with dummy shoegear and DCC... especially if someone were to produce a sound module for LUL stock ...

-jdp

That'd be the one... was a lot longer ago than I thought it was.

Looking at the technology now, it seems more than slightly crude in these days (what? No permanently-lit head/tail-lights), but damn if it wasn't inspirational at the time... although I'm still amused that, 9 years later, we still don't have off-the-shelf models of any real SR EMUs save Bachmann's recent slam-door efforts (there's a reason I'm modelling the midlands somewhere)

-jdp

the Scalefour insulators and conductor rail are, as you would expect, pretty much exactly to scale. I am using C and L finescale track in EM, and it all seems to work OK with EFE TS, although, just as with the real thing, the clearances are small

I'm using code 100 rails, so it should be ok. My class 168 has been a real pain. Have other people had problems with Bachmann DMUs being very low?

Thanks to everyone who helped here btw.

That looks great! I'm expecting some conductor rail and rail pots in the post any day now! Mine is for 00 gauge but the peco ones looks so poor I went for the P4 stuff shown. I'll get a photo up asap!

p.s. I'm hoping to really crack on with Harrow-on-the-Hill this coming week.

Finally some photos of my first A stock train and an example of some finished track

i100.photobucket.com/albums/m6/Adthelad/DSCN0633.jpg"
s100.photobucket.com/albums/m6/Adthelad/?action=view¤t=DSCN0639.jpg

s100.photobucket.com/albums/m6/Adthelad/?action=view¤t=DSCN0632.jpg

Oooh, that looks good. I like your A stock, was it a kit?

Looks like the website can be found at www.radleymodels.co.uk.

I rather fancy a 73 but thus far haven't found anyone that makes one. A kit wouldn't be much good as my painting isn't very good!