A reference to this traction technology just came up recently where the gentleman was searching for a method(s) to increase the pulling power of his 2-6-6-2 Spectrum steam engines.
There was a link to a video, and subsequently found a number of other videos touting the significant improvements available. But as I inspected the videos I found almost all of them dated about 5 years ago. And I could find NO mention of experiments on American model steam engines?
It was even a little difficult to find the specific subject on their own website?https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/specialised-model-accessories/dccconcepts-powerbase/
I certainly would have thought this product/subject would have generated more discussion than is apparent?
Brian
My Layout Plan
Interesting new Plan Consideration
Strange - there has been a similar post earlier on, which generated a few answers, but they seem to have disappeared.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
Magnatraction?
Magnetraction worked well, but it required locos with magnetized wheels and old steel tracks.
Megnatizing the tracks and running with steel wheels would require plastic or brass wheelsets on rolling stock.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
railandsailI certainly would have thought this product/subject would have generated more discussion than is apparent?
It seems to me that the fundamental idea is based on the idea that great increase in model adhesion will follow the application of magnetic-field attraction in place of weight. The idea is to put some of those powerful NIB-type magnets on the 'bottom' of existing locomotives, and then line the track with relatively large and heavy steel or at least ferromagnetically-susceptable plates. The magnets attract the plates and voila! more adhesive force on the driver treads (they also mention better electrical contact, perhaps in part via pickups on 'sprung drivers' as the chassis pulls down on the suspension) for a comparatively small magnet size.
We can see almost immediately what a ridiculous alternative to 'more weight' this approach will be. The magnetic attraction will follow a square law, with increasingly dramatic "adhesion" for comparatively small variance of the distance between the magnets and the active part of the underlying plate. I'd expect even the small variations unavoidable in laying plates relative to railhead of the actual track would cause either loss of effective adhesion or waaaaay too much adhesion resulting in runaway attraction and virtually 'nailing' the locomotive to the track.
In short, a British idea comparable to the actual sensibility of the original Webb compound or Dean's "wheelbaseless" locomotive as described in Fryer. I'm tempted to think of it as the Lucas implementation of Magnetraction, although of course the two approaches are quite different.
Personally I don't see a way to make it even borderline practical without almost inhuman attention to lining and surfacing both the trackwork and the underlying plates... perhaps not even then. Perhaps someone else who reads this will see how.
For you dead-rail fans, a perhaps 'less illogical' version of this would involve putting a heavy plate on some kind of motorized drive, and run it along with proportional servo control on some sort of guideway under the layout, with the aforementioned magnets on the underside of locomotives and perhaps other rolling stock 'as needed'. In fact if you used feedback control with some form of 'counter' electromagnet you could adjust the actual magnetic 'tension' positively, albeit a bit indirectly, relative to some sensed or measured datum like locomotive ride height, and avoid a great many of the potential issues cropping up above. Put a good set of speakers on there, or 'periodically' trailing under the consist, and you have both the 'right' sort of sound system and clickety-clack train noise almost solved for you without compromising scale construction of tenders or cars... four simple little magnets on a driver and a Hall sensor underneath give you default perfect quartering control for the sound at any speed, and make 'scale' valve-gear control and sound much more practical than they have historically been...
I leave the solutions for uncoupling and for switching to the alert reader.
The German manufacturer Busch makes a HO scale light railway running on 6.5mm (Z scale) track. The diminuitive locos weigh next to nothing and would hardly pull their weight without the help of a little magnet stuck underneath the engine. The track has a metal strip incorporated. Works quite nicely.
Tinplate ToddlerThe German manufacturer Busch makes a HO scale light railway running on 6.5mm (Z scale) track. The diminuitive locos weigh next to nothing and would hardly pull their weight without the help of a little magnet stuck underneath the engine.
They're smart enough to keep the magnetic assistance relatively light, and to incorporate the (thin) magnetic strip into what is essentially snap track.
How does the system perform on field grades, pulling a load?
Overmod We can see almost immediately what a ridiculous alternative to 'more weight' this approach will be. The magnetic attraction will follow a square law, with increasingly dramatic "adhesion" for comparatively small variance of the distance between the magnets and the active part of the underlying plate. I'd expect even the small variations unavoidable in laying plates relative to railhead of the actual track would cause either loss of effective adhesion or waaaaay too much adhesion resulting in runaway attraction and virtually 'nailing' the locomotive to the track.
Ridiculous?
If you would have spent some time: a) watching the video or b) read the instructions on the website, you would have known that the thin(!) metal plates are easy to install, and if you get various heights on the install, how is the rest of your trackwork looking?
Overmod In short, a British idea comparable to the actual sensibility of the original Webb compound or Dean's "wheelbaseless" locomotive as described in Fryer. I'm tempted to think of it as the Lucas implementation of Magnetraction, although of course the two approaches are quite different. Personally I don't see a way to make it even borderline practical without almost inhuman attention to lining and surfacing both the trackwork and the underlying plates... perhaps not even then. Perhaps someone else who reads this will see how.
That's bordering on slander to accuse the British of being bad engineers.
I see no problems whatsoever with the product. I know that it is going to help many lightweight small engines on inclines.
Swedish Custom painter and model maker. My Website:
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VideosIf you scroll down on this page you will find a number of videos depicting the increase in pulling power of the different locos tested,https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUTWZDHQ6Mq7K_qU73IR6jA
This one in particular was rather dramatic...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w13JZgUPwGI
Here's a video showing you the secret to Powerbase's magic -- steel plates under your track.
https://youtu.be/Sxiip-QdEE0
One of their videos does show a 'retrofit',...troublesome but doable.
I'm thinking it may not be necessary to equip all ones's locos?
And only on the most troublesome grades.
I wasn't too enamored with their method/device for attaching the magnets to the locos.
I've forgotten most of my 'magnet science', but I wonder it those plates could be replace by 1-2 good metal rods buried in the roadbed??,...maybe even energized ones??
Seems to me I recall that stainless is not as good a magnet material??
GraffenThat's bordering on slander to accuse the British of being bad engineers.
I was being playful and not particularly serious. But you cannot really argue that either Webb's approach to LP valve gear or the other constituted a wizard approach to design, any more than you can excuse the issues with middle big-ends in A4s.
Remember that part of this discussion is why there is relatively little adoption with larger prototypes, including presumably American engines up to articulated size.
You can get around at least some of the problem by increasing the area of the magnetic-field interaction, with the 'best' way probably being to use either a relatively large number of 'weaker' magnets or some kind of Halbach-array equivalent that gives a consistent field 'normal' to the space between the plates. Hopefully the proponents of the system will think about this.
OvermodHow does the system perform on field grades, pulling a load?
Actually, better than you might expect!
railandsailI've forgotten most of my 'magnet science', but I wonder it those plates could be replace by 1-2 good metal rods buried in the roadbed??,...maybe even energized ones??
"Energizing" a rod isn't going to help you much; I'm presuming you mean with the rods vertical and wound with solenoid coils as electromagnets. There have been real-world experiments with this, and they do work ... but only with servo control of the magnetic field which effectively limits the 'peak' adhesion over the rod to a comparatively small fraction of the achievable magnet power. I suspect you'd be better off with a geometry closer to a 'plate' that matches field lines with a distributed array of permanent magnets on the locomotive baseplate, using the same progressive actuation of sequential magnets that was used for the intermittent stud contact system GE developed for streetcars, or for high-speed rail. That is more complicated technically, I think, than something using the same proportional control on a moving plate.
The real issue here, which may turn out to be a non-issue in practice, is only that the type of magnet and expected field attraction may be 'too great' to give what we expect as meaningful levels of additional adhesion for the cost and work done to provide it, if smooth operation or assistance in 'unattended places' is the goal (I am thinking of sharp helixes as one place in particular where effective magnetic assistance would be highly valuable).
The logical solution, as at least two people have noted recently, is to settle for less magnetic strength to gain the necessary smoothness. Stainless might 'get you there' a bit better with excessively powerful magnets ... but the right answer, as Graffen indicated, is to use thinner plates of good material, and more distributed permag field lines, instead.
railandsailI'm thinking it may not be necessary to equip all ones's locos? And only on the most troublesome grades.
One of the great advantages to their design is that, with a little care, there should be little secondary problem from having a magnet or array glued to the underside (as opposed to fixed magnet location in the track) and the adhesion enhancement comes only when there are plates under the track (which can of course be varying thickness, or even 'coarsely' adjustable via moving plates in and out of the interaction field in servo). So you maintain interoperability even when you don't want the 'magnetraction', something much less easy to do with magnetizing the wheels relative to the railheads.
I was informed on another possible bonus of this system:
When using sound decoders with DDE, you can get real strained sound on the inclines as the magnets increase the motors load reading while you get no effect on curves.
GraffenI was informed on another possible bonus of this system: When using sound decoders with DDE, you can get real strained sound on the inclines as the magnets increase the motor's load reading while you get no effect on curves.
That's a good thought!
What it leads me to wonder about as a 'follow-up' is whether some device that increases the subgrade 'susceptibility' actively could be used to control precisely what the degree of increased load reading is at particular points on the grade, or for a programmed 'consist weight' that doesn't reflect the actual mass or resistance of the consist... now, among other things, that might be done or at least 'fine-tuned' with some track electromagnets... this is getting more interesting by the post.
Tinplate ToddlerStrange - there has been a similar post earlier on, which generated a few answers, but they seem to have disappeared.
I was one of the early respondents to this (or the other?) thread. Where did it go? The OP has a habit of linking to other forums, perhaps a moderator excised the thread and the OP began this new one?
I don't waste my time anymore.
Ed
Ed, I did NOT link to another forum,...only said 'on another subject thread'.I really have trouble with this 'isolationist stance' that doesn't seek to fully explore the world.
Overmod railandsail I've forgotten most of my 'magnet science', but I wonder it those plates could be replace by 1-2 good metal rods buried in the roadbed??,...maybe even energized ones?? "Energizing" a rod isn't going to help you much; I'm presuming you mean with the rods vertical and wound with solenoid coils as electromagnets. There have been real-world experiments with this, and they do work ... but only with servo control of the magnetic field which effectively limits the 'peak' adhesion over the rod to a comparatively small fraction of the achievable magnet power. I suspect you'd be better off with a geometry closer to a 'plate' that matches field lines with a distributed array of permanent magnets on the locomotive baseplate, using the same progressive actuation of sequential magnets that was used for the intermittent stud contact system GE developed for streetcars, or for high-speed rail. That is more complicated technically, I think, than something using the same proportional control on a moving plate.
railandsail I've forgotten most of my 'magnet science', but I wonder it those plates could be replace by 1-2 good metal rods buried in the roadbed??,...maybe even energized ones??
Actually I was not suggesting vertical rods, nor wound coils, etc...too complicated.
What I had in mind was impoving the magnetic properties of the rods in leiu of plates by imparting better magnetic characterists to these base fixtures when manufacturing them.....And then these rod(s) might be easier to install under the tracks??I think I remember that we very often create magnetism in certain materials,...so can we vary this amount we give it?
railandsailWhat I had in mind was improving the magnetic properties of the rods in lieu of plates by imparting better magnetic characteristics to these base fixtures when manufacturing them.....And then these rod(s) might be easier to install under the tracks??
The rods would do the opposite of what is 'desired': they would tend to concentrate the magnetic flux in a relatively small volume, which to me is NOT what you want. Remember that in these systems there is nothing but induced magnetism in the track structure, with the effective 'attraction' induced only by the permanent magnet(s) on the locomotive, unless you use compensating electromagnets (or movable elements like a magnetic chuck) underneath, somewhere.
What is wanted is magnetic fluxline attraction as purely 'normal' to the plane of the track as possible, distributed over as wide an area as possible. That is why the Powerbase system rightly uses a plate structure under the track rather than something more constrained.
I have gotten the very strong impression from the discussion so far that it's a good practice to use thinner rather than thicker plates, in part to control the shape of the flux in the 'air gap' and in part to limit some of the actual magnetic attraction from 'strong' small magnets. Another reason to use sheet or plates is that it can make horizontal alignment of the magnets less critical with respect to developed attraction (which I think is either mentioned or inherent in some of the Powerbase material). I'd expect that rods which don't follow the centerline of the track accurately will experience irregular falloff of attraction as the locomotive travels, and if the flux is between a relatively small powerful magnet and a rod the variance in effective field strength may be excessive for convenient 'working'. There is much less problem with a plate in which the flux path may not fringe significantly near the edges in practice; if the plates are reasonably wide, regardless of lateral alignment the effective strength will be the same.
I think I remember that we very often create magnetism in certain materials,...so can we vary this amount we give it?
One of the premises of the Powerbase system is that only a fixed permanent magnet on the locomotive, which can be crudely glued on rather than requiring precision alignment or fine tuning of some kind, is the active inducing part of the system. Theoretically this could be adjusted somewhat, but it is difficult to imagine many cost-effective ways of doing this in the space required, for the performance required. For example, some kind of magnetic-chuck arrangement could be made with lateral screw or wedge alignment which would 'fine-tune' the magnetic strength and spread out the fluxline pattern a bit, but it wouldn't be cheap and it wouldn't be simple.
Likewise, there are some potential advantages in controllling the peak 'allowable' flux in the plates (in part to reduce any effect of strong inverse-square attraction). That means that relatively 'thin' plates are probably preferable to thick ones, and some characteristics of the metal or structure in the plates (for example to minimize hysteresis/residual magnetism) could be made. Again, there are cost advantages in making the plates as inexpensively as possible, and with structure that is relatively easy to install and align under the track or roadbed.
Using a less susceptible alloy or structure in the plates (e.g. the stainless you were referencing) would require a more powerful magnet to produce equivalent 'adhesion'. There are potential problems with this; I think it would require some careful comparative testing to see which combinations of magnet structure and plate are the most effective in actual operation on 'real' model railroads, including first cost.
Stainless steel was mentioned as I believe that is the material utilized in their plates. I don't believe that stainless is magnitized as easily, nor as powerfully as other steels? And do we really need stainless on our indoor layouts??
I mentioned the 'rod' idea as it might be a more massive entity laid down the center of the roadbed/ballast relatively easier (retrofit) than the thin plates, And it might align itself just fine with the centrally positioned magnet(s) on the locomotive, as far as 'normal flux' is concerned.