I just acquired a 4 light Safetran crossing light and Cullen bell. No idea what Im doing and looking for help powering these and getting them working. I realize this is model train forum but suspect you good people love all things railroad! And having trouble finding any other forums out there for this topic. Any leads or point me in the right direction would be appreciated!
My first task is to power them (12v ?) just to see if they work. No idea where to start.
Respectfully
Todd
Cincinnati
Lots of stuff on Youtube, and they usually work on 12v... did you open it up and see if stuff still moves inside, and usually there is a circuit diagram on the door/cover
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Thanks for the reply! I saw all the YouTube videos but they are all just showing off there toys not explanatory on how they did it. Surprisingly little info, esp. for the 4 way railroad crossing lights.
I saw the 12 v on one of the videos. Cameta just quickly panned past a car battery charger they were using.
All the parts in the bell are easy and move perfectly. There is also a diagram, I just don't know how to read one well enough to be sure. Maybe I will post that. There are three posts and don't want to choose the wrong one. Screwed up another antique guessing now gun shy
Yeah, post a good picture of the diagram and a close up of the terminals.
Is there a model number? or other identifing marks? Do a Google search for wiring diagrams for that make model.
Tom Trigg
Thanks for the treplies and leads. Very appreciated. as requested here are some pics of the diagram and posts for this Model 333:
DIAGRAM: I dont really know how to read an electric diagram without guessing ;^)
POSTS:
Attached here are the railroad crossing sign with posts:
The Bell...
The schematic shows that you need only two wires from your power source to the device. The "+" at the top of the variable resistor is the left most terminal of the three binding posts on the lower left of the device (per the photos). The "-" connection at the bottom of the schematic is the middle binding post of the three. (The third post is just a terminal to connect wires from the two coils together, you make no connection to it.)
I am assuming the blue wire and the loose black wire in the photo are from the outside of the unit and are probably the wires that brought power into the unit. Assuming that is true, then the black wire should be connected to the left most binding post and power would be connected to them outside the unit. (I have no idea what the yellow, red or orange wires are for.)
Assuming you use a 12V battery (or a car battery charger) to power it, connect the "+" battery terminal (red on a car battery) to the black wire (connected to the left most binding post) and the "-" battery terminal (black on a car battery) to the blue wire (connected to the middle binding post) and the bell should start ringing.
To adjust the rate of the bell ringing, lightly loosen the screw on the band wrapped around middle of the variable resistor (that brown ceramic tubular component at the extreme left of the device just above the left binding post)... probably want to do this with the battery disconnected and the bell not ringing... save your ears and lessen the possibility of a short circuit while you are poking around with a screwdriver. "I THINK" that moving the band up will decrease the ringing rate and down will increase the rate. Move it a wee bit, make sure the right side of the band is in good contact with the metal wires exposed on that side of the resistor and tighten the screw again to hold it in place. Then apply power again and check for about 200 rings per minute and a "pleasing tone" from the bell (your aesthetic feelings apply). You probably don't want to sit and count rings for a whole minute (What? I can't hear you anymore! WHAT?!?!)... so 200/60 is a wee bit over 3 per second, or 33.33 per 10 seconds... a good guess is fine here (again, your aesthetics apply)
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
There is an oil hole for lubrication (top left 32 in the digram). Any idea what type of oil one would use?
The paper inside the device says to use AAR SM-07 to oil it... don't that just tell you everything you need to know??? At least you can be fairly certain to not use peanut butter or mayonaise, but I guess it could be possible that SM-07 means one of those.
Seriously, I don't know. I would look at where the oil goes once introduced into the hole. Does it look like a grease? Or is it totally dry? I would guess that a light machine oil (sewing machine oil, 3-in-1 SAE 10, or maybe 3-in-1 SAE 20) would work... Sort of depends on what happens to the oil... does it just drip onto stuff or is there a container that gets filled and it keeps a wick wet or dribbles into a bearing? Probably don't want to just dump lots of oil all over the place, but I can see where it would be good to put a drop or two on pivot points. I don't see the location in any of the photos but the diagram sort of indicates to me that you would just put a couple of drops of "oil" in the hole and call it good for a year or three. I doubt if you will be ringing it as often as it did when it was installed at a grade crossing and I doubt if the RR oiled it very often... probably only if the system had broken and somebody thought of it while up a ladder looking at things.
I am cogitatin' on what to tell you to try with the lights. I have a set that I wired up to flash with an automotive turn signal flasher and a SPDT relay (I'll explain that later). I have also made 1/2 scale crossing lights (using LEDs) and have a couple of methods of making them flash nicely. The hardest part with a real set is figuring out where the wires go and which ones you want to use. I'll try to explain how to do that later. It ain't hard, just takes an awful lot of words to convey the simple process.
I don't want to scare you off, but I feel like I should offer some advice/warning about playing with electricity.
There are two properties of electricity that you should have some understanding of in order to play safe.
One is called Voltage... that is how much push there is behind the electricity to make it go. The other is Amperage... that is how much electricity there is flowing. High values of either of these can be dangerous. They are also interrelated: namely, the higher the Voltage, the more Amperage there can be.
Voltage is often abbreviated to Volts or "V", and Amperage is abbreviated to Amps or "A" and often referred to as "Current".
If you have 8 "D-cell" flashlight batteries in a row, they will put out 12 Volts just like a car battery, but being just little "D-cells" they cannot produce much current for the 12 Volts to push. They just don't have the capability to produce massive amounts of electricity, maybe 2 or 3 Amps. And what little they can produce just won't last long if you keep the current flowing... the chemical process inside the battery just can't make it very fast.
However, a car battery is capable of producing up to 600 Amps (or more) of electricity and sustaining that amount for a long time. (You may have seen advertising about "Cold Cranking Amps"... that is what they are talking about... it takes a lot of power to start a car... most to cause the starter motor to rotate and have some left over the produce a hot spark in the cylinders). Instantaneous unrestricted current flow can be thousands of Amps!
If you connect 8 flashlight batteries together and then stick a screwdriver across the end terminals (i.e.: "short" them together), you will get a spark and the screwdriver shaft "might" get warm, but the batteries will be depleted pretty quickly and nothing really bad will happen (other than ruining 8 batteries).
However, if you stick a screwdriver shaft across a car battery's terminals, you won't get just a spark, you will probably get a blinding flash and instead of the shaft getting warm, it will probably vaporize and splatter molten metal all over the place.
And you don't have to be stabbing the screwdriver directly across the terminals of the battery itself. It is relatively the same thing to connect two long wires to the terminals and short the other ends together.
So... when you are working on your bell or lights, disconnect at least one wire from the battery before you go sticking a screwdriver into things. (And arrange that disconnected wire such that it cannot accidently come in contact with the terminal it was disconnected from.)
You can safely play with these things if you have some respect for what it can do if you are not careful.
There are other things that can be used instead of a car battery and the danger level is dependent on how much current it is capable of producing all at once. In reality, all you need is 12 Volts and less than 1 Amp to operate the bell. The amount of current to operate the lights will depend on how many lights and what power the flasher circuit requires... I would hazard a guess that the lights would require less than 4 Amps... so you do not need a big car battery to operate them. A small (cheap) battery charger would suffice. And if you change the lights from incandescent bulbs to LEDs, the current requirement will drop to less than an Amp for the light set too.
Do you have a “multi-meter” of some sort? It would be easier to test the wiring of the lights if you do.
After half an hour Google search for AAR SM-07, getting passed what I take to be German Soccor League scores, I found a short and not so informative article by Dupont that refered to it as refined Palm Oil, Aircraft/Automotive grade lubricant. A Dupont lube search gave no other information. My experience with Palm Oil is limited to just knowing it is very stickey.
I guess that would mean to use a thick oil instead of a light machine oil. (Maybe I wasn't so far off suggesting Peanut butter!!!... sorry, I keep remembering a Dennis the Menace comic where he is down on the ground in Mr. Wilson's driveway with his wagon upside-down and the wheels off. He also has a jar of something in front of him and his hands are covered with some sort of glop... he is looking up at Mr. Wilson and says, "I always grease my wheels with Peanut butter.")
I was thinking something more on the line of the white lithium grease we used to use on the distributor cam for the breaker arm of the points. Thin enough to be applied through a thin needle point, yet thick enough to stay in place. But PB would work, at least for a while.
So? It's been a week... any noise from the bell? Can you still hear? Have the neighbor's filed noise complaints for testing it at 2 AM?
Have you done any investigation of the wiring of the crossing lights?
When I got my "real" crossing lights, there were NO wires, so I don't know what RR practice is with regard to how they wire them, but all that is needed is 2 wires to each bulb and one of those wires from each light can be connected together such that only 3 wires total are needed for connecting up 2 alternately flashing lights. (Even if there are multiple pairs of lights, they can be wired in parallel such that only 3 wires are required from the flasher circuit to the pole the lights are mounted on.
The idea is that the common wire from the pair of lights goes to one side of the power supply and the other side of the power supply is alternately connected to the other two wires by the flasher circuit.
Are the bulbs in your fixture, LEDs or Incandescents?
I have a simple flasher circuit that you can make from easily obtained parts (cheap automotive turn signal flasher) if they are incandescents, and another similar circuit that can be used if they are LEDs (but it requires a hefty resistor to draw enough power to make the flasher device work, which will be a bit harder to get if you don't have some sort of electronic component store in your area... but, well... easily obtained from on-line mail-order places).
I can supply a schematic of the circuit and explain how to assemble the parts if needed. Easy and simple.
the words 12 VOLT WALL PLUG just scared me! I hope that was a typo or you misspoke, there is no way you can get less that 120 volts from a wall socket. good luck with the project and keep us up t speed on the results, Pete
BluPete the words 12 VOLT WALL PLUG just scared me! I hope that was a typo or you misspoke, there is no way you can get less that 120 volts from a wall socket. good luck with the project and keep us up t speed on the results, Pete
I havent had a chance to try it yet! Sorry! Will try it this week and report back. REALLY appreciate all the help.
Refers, methinks, to a wall wart. Sort of thing that we used to use to power an old answering machine. Or possibly charge certain things.
They have very poor current ratings, so probably take more than that to drive these units.
Sorry for delay. So busy, so many projects. I tested it and it did not work. I had it hooked up as per Semepers desciption and in the pictures. 12v maybe not enough juice? I did it with the black and blue wires attached and without. The black and blue wire go nowhere so wasnt sure there were important. They go from thier respective post down and out the bottom and are connected to nothing.
How'd I miss this posting? Sorry to not get back to you much sooner.
From the looks of the cables you have connected, I'd say you are possibly using a battery "trickle charger" ??? Those are usually good for 4 to 8 Amps, so I'd assume you have enough power to operate the bell.
A possible cause (other than a power supply that is not capable of providing the power) would be that there is an open circuit somewhere. Some quick checks can be attempted with just the power supply you have. Just be careful to not short the power wires to each other... that includes touching the big aligator clips to each other... AND... touching them both to something that has very low resistance (no "load" to limit the current flow); such as having one connected to one of the binding posts and then touching the other one to the other end of a wire directly off of that binding post. If you are using a car battery as the power source, it is capable of dumping several hundred amps and the sudden rush of current can weld the aligator clamps to each other or what they are touching... amidst lots of sparks and flying molten metal. If you are using a trickle charger, you could still get some major sparking so be careful where you go poking around.
Sorry to be so safety minded, but I worry about offering advice to others without at least some 'scare tactics' to TRY to keep people safe.
Ideally now you would have an Ohmmeter, Voltmeter, or some other circuit tester to test that there is not a lose connection or a burnt out component. It is possible that the unit is broken and that is why it was sold to you.
Primary components to check would be the switch that breaks the current flow when the coil pulls the armature down to ring the bell and the coil itself. Bells usually work by energizing a coil to make a strong magnetic field which attracts a metal object (the armature) that in turn pulls something against the gong to ring it, but at the same time, that moving metal pulls a mechanical switch that breaks the circuit so the coil loses power and the magnetic field goes away and releases the metal and a spring (or gravity) moves it back to the starting position, which allows the mechanical switch to make contact again to re-energize the coil to again pull the metal part back... this repeats as long as the external power is supplied.
If the coil is bad (broken wire internally) then no current will flow, thus no magnetic field and the bell doesn't work. If the switch is bad, then the same thing... no worky.
Not much you can do if the coil is broken internally. Maybe (really MAYBE) you could unwind the miles of wire inside it and find the break, repair it and then wind the wire back. (ha ha ha... not worthwhile to try, even if you could do it neatly) Replacing the coil with a good one is the only "good" fix if it is bad.
If the switch is bad, it is possible that you could fix it, if it is just maybe bent to the point where it won't make contact when the armature is in the relaxed state, you might be able to adjust the bend to put it back in contact. It is also possible that the contacts are just very dirty and a good cleaning will fix it.
I think the first thing I would try is to connect the power source as you have it, and then with a stick (pencil, etc.) push on that curved piece of metal that constitutes one of the contacts of the switch to make sure it is in contact with the other contact on the armature.
The switch is shown in the bottom photo of your Nov. 20 10:20 AM posting in the upper center. That long thin curved strip bent over the bronze piece that has the white and black wires connected to it.
It should, with the armature in the relaxed state, be in contact with the reversed 'L' shape metal contact on the black armature.
The armature should be free to move up and down, too.
There are other things that might be repairable, such as the resistor being bad, or a loose or corroded connection someplace (but it looks fairly clean inside so is probably not a problem) Let's see if it is the switch first since it is the most probable problem and the easiest to test by just pressing on it. There are other things to try, but that is the simplest and quickest.
You might need to clean the contacts. Get a fingernail emery board and lightly "sand" the surfaces where the curved strip contacts the "L".
Wow. I cant thank you enough for the info and careful detail. Im just now learnign about volt meters and will try to figure out testing the compoents with the Voltmeter.
At first I used a small trickle charger for my motorcycle (Battery Tender). I switched to a small battery charger that you see there.
Dont mind the warnings at all. I dont know much about electricty let alone these more complex low voltage items. Trying to restore a 1967 Rock Ola wallbox and learnign a little more. Any info helps me learn.
AQll components move freely and easily - in very good shape. Will go check the switch and learn how to use this Voltmeter on the various compoents. Will report back!
Now what can you tell me about the 4 way railway light?
I just remembered another weak link in the circuit... the variable resistor has a sliding contact that could be loose or corroded such as to interrupt the current flow.
It is the large tubular, brown ceramic component on the extreme left center with the wire from the left most binding post connected to the bottom of it. That metal band/ring around it also with a black wire that goes up toward the top of the housing to the mechanical switch. It can slide up and down and must make good contact with the bare metal wires on the right side of the tube shape.
Make sure that metal band/ring is tight around the body of the component.
Contact look good on the L shaped connection. I started doubting my speed charger. I* turned it on and put volt meter on its red and black clips and got nothing. MAybe my charger is bad. Charger is turning on when plugged in but voltmeter shows nothing coming out on the red/black clips end. Going to repalce today and report back.
I'm starting to wonder if basic speed chargers aren't enough to pover it. I ought a Stanley 8amp speed charger and it also didn't do anything. The metal band on that tubular ceramic part is on tight with good connection.
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