Lately I have been thinking about what the track we use, and I can't help but wonder if the track that we use, could not be made of better materials, to increase the performance of our trains - granted a better track material could increase the overall price, but considering the effort we go through to increase the performance of our trains, it may still be cost effective.
What then, would be better materials with which to make the track?
Huh?
Most rail is nickel-silver. Older track was made of brass. The brass will conduct electricity better, but the oxide will cause poor electrical pickup issues. Nickel-silver does not conduct as well as brass, but the oxide does conduct better. All track gets dirty and needs to be cleaned(as well as the wheels).
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Greg H.I can't help but wonder if the track that we use, could not be made of better materials, to increase the performance of our trains...What then, would be better materials with which to make the track?
Gold. It conducts great, and it doesn't tarnish. But then, it's soft so it may wear out faster. Maybe a silver-tin alloy? It's used as lead-free solder sometimes, and the tin keeps it from tarnishing (I think). Silver is also an excellent conductor. But that might also be too soft to last long.
Maybe we should just stick with nickel-silver (an alloy of 60% copper, 20% nickel, and 20% zinc).
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Steel is the obvious choice. It most looks like the real thing, and it gives noticeably better traction for our model locomotives. Soft steel model rail is actually easier to draw through dies than nickel silver. However, it's been tried, and it's flaws for model use revealed.
Steel rusts instead of tarnishing when it oxidizes. Rust does not conduct electricity worth diddly. So you have to prevent the top of the rail from rusting (on the side of the rail, rust looks realistic).
The biggest knock on steel rail is difficulty in soldering it. Attaching feeders, constructing frogs, etc., is all pretty difficult with steel rail.
There is a high lead content steel that will solder nicely that has also been used to make rail. However, it has a gray appearance even when polished compared to the silver color of normal steel.
yours in handlaid track
Fred W
jrbernier Huh? Most rail is nickel-silver. Older track was made of brass. The brass will conduct electricity better, but the oxide will cause poor electrical pickup issues. Nickel-silver does not conduct as well as brass, but the oxide does conduct better. All track gets dirty and needs to be cleaned(as well as the wheels).
Just an observation, but nickel silver is just another type of brass/bronze - the proportions of copper to nickel are that it has a "silver" color rather than a reddish or yellow tint, but the "silver" color can be achieved by other alloy's and metal treatment processes, that have the possibility of producing a superior product when it comes to conducting and tarnish issues.
Darth Santa Fe Gold. It conducts great, and it doesn't tarnish. But then, it's soft so it may wear out faster. Maybe a silver-tin alloy? It's used as lead-free solder sometimes, and the tin keeps it from tarnishing (I think). Silver is also an excellent conductor. But that might also be too soft to last long. Maybe we should just stick with nickel-silver (an alloy of 60% copper, 20% nickel, and 20% zinc).
True, gold is a great conductor and it doesn't tarnish, and can be applied to lessor metals that have superior mechanical properties, in layers that are so thin as to have minimal impact on visual appearance.
Except for the problem with the oxide being an electrical insulator, aluminum offers several advantages over nickel silver - improved electrical conductivity over the entire length of the rail for one.
Mild steel offers superior mechanical properties, even if it has poorer corrosion an conductivity, which could be addressed by various alloy and production treatment processes such as nickle plating ( the preparation of which, often includes a layer of copper for improved plating performance ).
So why stick with nickel-silver?
fwright Steel is the obvious choice. It most looks like the real thing, and it gives noticeably better traction for our model locomotives. Soft steel model rail is actually easier to draw through dies than nickel silver. However, it's been tried, and it's flaws for model use revealed. Steel rusts instead of tarnishing when it oxidizes. Rust does not conduct electricity worth diddly. So you have to prevent the top of the rail from rusting (on the side of the rail, rust looks realistic). The biggest knock on steel rail is difficulty in soldering it. Attaching feeders, constructing frogs, etc., is all pretty difficult with steel rail. There is a high lead content steel that will solder nicely that has also been used to make rail. However, it has a gray appearance even when polished compared to the silver color of normal steel. yours in handlaid track Fred W
Yes, steel does rust when not alloyed and can be a pain to solder, but when phosphorus is used as an alloying compound, rusting can be negligible ( reference the Iron Pillar of Delhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi ) and tinning steel is not hard and makes soldering easier.
Steel track is what most modelers LEAVE when upgrading to nickel-silver. It looks great for a while, nice and shiny but don't be fooled. Much of the time that steel rail has a thin coat of zinc on it to improve conductivity. Anyone who tried Tyco's 'Tru-Steel' track back in the 70's knows of the shortcomings it had. One thing it did extremely well was rust!
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Because Nickel-Silver is does most everything we want.
For rail, we want (in no particular order):1). Has a shiny silver appearance on the railhead to match prototype rail.2). Is easily soldered to.3). Has a high coeffient of friction.4). Is inexpensive.5). Is corrosion resistant.6). Has high conductivity.7). Will not wear down under normal use.8). Will not excessivley wear plastic, brass or N/S wheels.9). Is ductile enough to prevent cracking when bending.10). Can be cut by hand with rail nippers.
Can you name a metal that can do all that in a superior way than N/S and prove it? I mean, I can say that aluminum could do it, but that's just my opinion...I have no proof. IMHO, I would need the opinion of a mechanical engineer or at least a manufacturing engineer if you can't find any book values for the materials in question.
Paul A. Cutler III*******************Weather Or No Go New Haven*******************
What about have track with an NS core and top so it conducts well, but with steel sides so it has realistic rust.
Would gleaming actually help steel or brass track? I've read somwehre that gleaming brass track will actually get the railheads to look more silver; however I remain sceptical until I see it done or do it myself.
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
Actually NS is a very good conductor of electricity. While one hears all the time that NS is not as good a conductor as copper or brass, it it is only 7th after gold, silver, copper, brass, tin, & one other I can't remember. and these all have they're issues of being too soft or corrode etc.
The real issues are the low voltage we use and the low mass of the contact area , (the locomotive wheels),
This is why we use the third best conductor, copper, to distribute power to the nicklesilver rails
I think your time and heavy thinking would be better spent on other things.
Jay
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Paul3 Because Nickel-Silver is does most everything we want. For rail, we want (in no particular order):1). Has a shiny silver appearance on the railhead to match prototype rail.
For rail, we want (in no particular order):1). Has a shiny silver appearance on the railhead to match prototype rail.
Then why do we turn around and paint it a matte gray / black? If you have pic's of prototype rail that is a shiny silver, without being first cut and/or ground down, please post them - the only place where I see any shine is at the very top of the rail, where the oxidation is constantly being knocked off and even then it's more gray than polished silver.
Paul3 2). Is easily soldered to.
2). Is easily soldered to.
As compared to what? Untreated iron/steel? The nickel content of it, actually decreases the ability to get a good solder connection over Alum or Copper.
What about sectional track with molded in roadbed - how the heck is that supposed to be soldered? At the very least they could have embedded a copper or alum bus within the roadbed, to improve electrical conductivity the entire length of the track, rather than only at the point of connection, and in that sense I would actually say that MR track technology has actually degraded, as that makes it harder to get a good connection without melting everything.
Paul3 3). Has a high coeffient of friction.
3). Has a high coeffient of friction.
I have to disagree. Nickel decreases the friction of alloys it's added to.
Paul34). Is inexpensive.5). Is corrosion resistant.6). Has high conductivity.7). Will not wear down under normal use.8). Will not excessively wear plastic, brass or N/S wheels.9). Is ductile enough to prevent cracking when bending.10). Can be cut by hand with rail nippers.
As compared to what?
I guess, that my point is, 30+ odd years ago, the mainline MR industry as a whole moved from yellow brass to a white brass ( I have some N scale track from the late 60's made from NS and can't tell performance wise where it ends and the stuff I bought 2 yrs ago begins ) and where has it gone since then?
Advances in material science have made quite a bit of progress since then, and we are not seeing the same advances in MR track. We have had advances in power handling ( delivering power to the track and once the power gets to the engine ), advances in electrical motor technology, advances in engine weight and traction ( as far as mass on the contact surface and increasing the actual friction of the wheels on the rail ) but virtually nothing when it comes to improving the actual track that the MR community uses.
It really appears, that the industry has decided that NS is " good enough " and that no effort needs to be expended to see if something better might be available.
If money would be no object: Platinum or some alloy containing it.
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Greg
I have to disagree with you. What advances in power handling? What advances in engine weight and traction?
Paul did a nice job of explaining how nickel silver was a reasonable compromise for most of the desired qualities of model rail. I don't think it's the industry that decided nickel silver is "good enough"; I think it is we as the market have decided.
Can a better compromise be found? Probably - and the guy making the investment will likely lose his shirt making the stuff. Mr's are very conservative about switching to new ideas. Look how much fight is/has been expended over the switch from brass to nickel silver. LaVancil had a minimum order run of some wonderful leaded steel code 81 rail - complete with the gray color you tout and perhaps the most accurate cross section in HO scale rail, and the lead content prevented corrosion and made soldering easy. And he's still selling it decades after it was made.
As for your other examples - I think weight and tractive effort have regressed over the past in order to achieve better appearance at reasonable cost. We lost weight and traction in the switch from metal to plastic boilers. We lost traction again by switching to nickel-plated drivers. We lost durability in our loco mechanisms by switching to split axle construction - but we gained all wheel pickup at low cost. We lost more weight by adding sound and DCC to our locos.
just my thoughts
During the Korean War, brass was a critical metal, unavailable for casual purposes. Model track manufacturers substituted steel, touting its prototype-like qualities. Well, forget that. Modelers quickly returned to brass when it became available again. In the 1960s most modelers switched to the superior nickle-silver rail.
While rail with a higher silver content, or better yet, a gold alloy (pure gold is too soft) would be great, but doubt there would be a viable market because modelers would object to the price.
It would be great if a scientist/engineer/entrepreneur type would market a superior, affordable rail for us.
Mark
fwright Greg I have to disagree with you. What advances in power handling? What advances in engine weight and traction?
How about DCC & low speed movement for starters ?
How about using more mass than just the weight of the motor and it's frame?
fwright Can a better compromise be found? Probably - and the guy making the investment will likely lose his shirt making the stuff. Mr's are very conservative about switching to new ideas. Look how much fight is/has been expended over the switch from brass to nickel silver. LaVancil had a minimum order run of some wonderful leaded steel code 81 rail - complete with the gray color you tout and perhaps the most accurate cross section in HO scale rail, and the lead content prevented corrosion and made soldering easy. And he's still selling it decades after it was made.
Tout?
No, not touting - just pointing out that there is a difference between the shiny silver of so called prototypical NS rail and the real thing.
I'm not saying that steel is better, but I have to wonder if the developers of T scale may not be on the right track ( no pun intended ), after all, not only do they have to use a material for the rails that is responsive to the magnetic wheels of T scale engines, but it's very nature is going to make the rail for T scale more susceptible to corrosion problems than is going to affect N or Z scales - so what are they doing with T scale rail to avoid that problem, and is it something that can be used with rail for other scales to improve traction?
fwright As for your other examples - I think weight and tractive effort have regressed over the past in order to achieve better appearance at reasonable cost. We lost weight and traction in the switch from metal to plastic boilers. We lost traction again by switching to nickel-plated drivers. We lost durability in our loco mechanisms by switching to split axle construction - but we gained all wheel pickup at low cost. We lost more weight by adding sound and DCC to our locos. just my thoughts Fred W
If you have a data set that supports your position, I would really like to see it.
I doubt it - a year or so ago, I looked at the weight of some N scale loco's that my dad had purchased ( in the late 60's - early 70's ), and they weighed in at about 2.5-3 oz, while N scale loco's of today can exceed 3.5 oz even with sound and decoders - for that matter, for the price that we are paying for loco's, it's not totally out of the question that some of them may be using some tungsten based iron to give them the added weight.
Still as you say, we have a loss of traction when using NS rails with nickel plated drivers - that is a very good example of how nickel usually reduces friction in alloy's that use it, especially in situations when it is in contact with another nickel alloy - so, is it something we want, if we can avoid it?
Greg H.fwright Greg I have to disagree with you. What advances in power handling? What advances in engine weight and traction? How about DCC & low speed movement for starters ? How about using more mass than just the weight of the motor and it's frame?
DCC is not power handling; it's a control system. I thought you were referring to how we feed the rails and power through the locomotive. Slow speed was researched and achieved in the '60s and '70s, despite inferior motors. Development of various pulse profiles for slow speed running and installation of flywheels were a part of the movement to better operating locomotives that probably peaked in the '70s. Today's locomotives, especially diesel models, owe a lot of their improvement to the research and trials of several decades ago.
Actually, the transistor throttles of yesteryear had more flexibility and "tunability" than today's DCC. DCC is limited by the physical space and heat dissipation capabilities of the decoders. PWM is standard because it can be implemented without generating much heat in the decoder.
Tout? No, not touting - just pointing out that there is a difference between the shiny silver of so called prototypical NS rail and the real thing.
Color perception is obviously an individual matter. I see model nickel silver track in normal use as being too dull compared to the bright gleam of the prototype rail head that I see daily in Colorado Springs. Perhaps "gleaming" my track may bring it closer to the prototype in my perception. You see it differently.
I have no knowledge of T scale. Lionel introduced Magne-Traction in 1951? by embedding magnets in the axles to improve traction, pulling power, and ability to hug the rails. And it worked (and still does). Magne-Traction requires a magnetic return path of steel ties and rails - it provides no benefits on Atlas 3 rail O nickel silver track with plastic ties - or even GarGraves steel rail track with wood ties.
If you have a data set that supports your position, I would really like to see it. I doubt it - a year or so ago, I looked at the weight of some N scale loco's that my dad had purchased ( in the late 60's - early 70's ), and they weighed in at about 2.5-3 oz, while N scale loco's of today can exceed 3.5 oz even with sound and decoders - for that matter, for the price that we are paying for loco's, it's not totally out of the question that some of them may be using some tungsten based iron to give them the added weight. Still as you say, we have a loss of traction when using NS rails with nickel plated drivers - that is a very good example of how nickel usually reduces friction in alloy's that use it, especially in situations when it is in contact with another nickel alloy - so, is it something we want, if we can avoid it?
I live in the HO world, you live in N. Perhaps that explains the differences in our perceptions. I'm looking at a "super-detailed" Bowser PRR K-4 Pacific and a Spectrum PRR K-4 Pacific side-by-side. The Bowser, all die-cast, is based on tooling from the 1950s. The Spectrum is 1990s plastic technology. The Bowser is by far the better performing locomotive, in all aspects, despite its "primitive" Pittman motor and limited electrical pickup. And the Spectrum is by far the more realistic looking of the two, despite the Bowser's installed super detailing. The Bowser out-weighs, out-pulls, and runs smoother at both low and medium speeds. The Bowser K-4 suffers perhaps 10% of the derailments of the Spectrum on the same track. And I have confidence that with a modicum of care, the Bowser will still be running for my children when I am gone. I don't have that confidence in the Spectrum. But I would put the Spectrum in the display case with a set of passenger cars every time.
Visual detractors on the Bowser are the stock brass tender wheels on the pickup side, and black on wheels on the other. If I don't occasionally clean the oxidation off the brass tender wheels and truck bolsters, the locomotive won't run right. The Spectrum has nickel plated tender wheels all around, which do look much better, and don't suffer from the oxidation issues.
In talking to custom loco builders, all know that steel driver tires produce the best traction. But modelers (customers) won't allow the steel tires because of potential rust down the road on a model they are paying many, many hundreds for. The custom builders and very high end brass makers have switched to a workable stainless steel alloy for the driver tires to gain the traction without the corrosion.
Another data point: compare a Roundhouse steam engine with nickel plated drivers and the same model with brass drivers. Roundhouse made them both ways, with later versions having nickel plated. The brass driver model will out-pull the model with nickel-plated drivers in otherwise identical locomotives. Yet, I will not buy the Roundhouse with brass drivers because of the appearance issue.
And that was my point - almost any alloy selected for rail (or for wheels) has some trade-offs in features and drawbacks. Paul, with his list of criteria, demonstrated that nickel silver is a reasonable compromise. You can improve against some of the criteria with a different rail material. But you will give up some against other criteria. The priority of the criteria is going to vary among individuals. Though I may be speaking wrongly, I believe (opinion here) that most mr's don't care about ultimate traction of their locos - they don't have room to run maximum length trains all the time. Appearance and corrosion/oxidation resistance and ability to solder and price would be the top four attributes for rail for most home layouts. If you can produce something better than nickel silver against those criteria, I'm all ears.
You obviously don't like nickel silver rail. What aspects of it are negative enough to you to warrant this thread? Perhaps you might want to research and present some alternatives. In G, track manufacturers use aluminum, nickel silver, and brass for rail. Each has its adherents. In HO and O, brass, mild steel, leaded steel, tin-plated steel, and nickel silver have all been tried. To date, nickel silver has been the rail material of choice.for most. I simply present the data points as historical info so you know what has already been done as you start your quest.
Greg H. Paul3 Because Nickel-Silver is does most everything we want. For rail, we want (in no particular order):1). Has a shiny silver appearance on the railhead to match prototype rail. Then why do we turn around and paint it a matte gray / black? If you have pic's of prototype rail that is a shiny silver, without being first cut and/or ground down, please post them - the only place where I see any shine is at the very top of the rail, where the oxidation is constantly being knocked off and even then it's more gray than polished silver.
Where I am the rails do have a more polished silver look. It is not just the colour though--one needs look at the reflectivity as well I suspect. A sort of Grey colour could be just from a rather dull sky as wel. BTST. If I go and photograph a railway on a bright sunny day the rails would appear as a bright silver colour---but do the same thing on a dull dull day and, well, grey would be it---with the silver still there--
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
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If you are trying to infer that DCC's keeping of a relatively high voltage constantly on the rails in the 'new' advancement, forget it. Constant voltage tot he rails goes back (commercially) as far as GE's Astrac system - and that even was AC to the rails, which some say is why DCC helps keep the track clean (and others will say it makes the track dirtier - go figure). Some other pre-DCC control systems used fixed DC, but a common feature of even the command control systems that came before DCC was a fixed voltage, usually around the max for a given scale. By having the low voltage for slow runnign come only after the critical wheel to track interface, it made for more reliable operation.
Adding weight is nothign new either. We might not melt lead at home and pour it into die-cast boiler shells anymore, but adding weight for better tractive effort is nothign new - I have pictures in old Model Railroaders of tractive effort contests. One somewhat well publicized was in 1948 when a dry ice powered live 'steam' loco was pitted against a more typical electric motored loco. John Page recollected this in one of his Looking Back columns in the 80's.
What has changed, simply from Athearn changing, is more nickle-silver wheels and less sintered iron. Sintered iron wheels give greater tractive effort at the cost of electrical contact. Nickle-silver wheels, or at least plated wheels, give a much better contact surface which makes slow speed running more reliable, at the expense of tractive effort.
Bottom line is - what sort of improvement are you looking for? What benefits would there be from a different track material that you couldn't get from good old nickle silver track?
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Packer What about have track with an NS core and top so it conducts well, but with steel sides so it has realistic rust. Would gleaming actually help steel or brass track? I've read somwehre that gleaming brass track will actually get the railheads to look more silver; however I remain sceptical until I see it done or do it myself.
We frequently must make due with less than perfect materials because of other mitigating factors; unless you are driving one of those quarter million dollar automobiles which are, essentially, custom built then your vehicle contains a certain amount of plastic. That mitigating factor, in this instance, is weight reduction which is essentlal for increased fuel economy which is not only a government mandate but also a distinct selling point in automobiles. Gold, silver, aluminum, and steel are all better conductors than copper and it's alloys--as has been mentioned nickel silver is an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc--but they all have intrinsic problems which makes them less-than-ideal for our purposes. When I first got into the hobby in the early '60s nickel silver was still relatively rare--I seem to recall Atlas harking that their track was "NOW AVAILABLE IN NICKEL SILVER"-- and therefore significantly more expensive than brass. As its volume of production has increased its price has come down; it may be somewhat less-than-perfect but it is functional for our purposes.
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fwright DCC is not power handling; it's a control system. I thought you were referring to how we feed the rails and power through the locomotive. Slow speed was researched and achieved in the '60s and '70s, despite inferior motors. Development of various pulse profiles for slow speed running and installation of flywheels were a part of the movement to better operating locomotives that probably peaked in the '70s. Today's locomotives, especially diesel models, owe a lot of their improvement to the research and trials of several decades ago.
Is not the way power is controlled/used just an aspect of power handling - IOW, the engineering that regulates how power is distributed and used?
I grant that while the use of pulsed power and similar were developed earlier, they all relied on regulating the power at the source, and that affected the entire section of track and everything on it - the ability to deliver a constant source and then regulate the power only at the point of use has only been accomplished with DCC - IOW, DC was like trying to control the speed of a motor in your home, by changing the output at the generators at the electric company, while DCC is more like adjusting the speed of your car on the road by changing the throttle settings.
fwright Actually, the transistor throttles of yesteryear had more flexibility and "tunability" than today's DCC. DCC is limited by the physical space and heat dissipation capabilities of the decoders. PWM is standard because it can be implemented without generating much heat in the decoder.
You would have to document that for me to accept that, since the further away from the point of use that you try and regulate power, the more inefficient and greater delay the feedback becomes - like trying to adjust the water coming out of a hose when you are at one end watching what comes out and your kid is at the faucet around the corner of the house turning it up and down according to what he hears from you.
fwright Color perception is obviously an individual matter. I see model nickel silver track in normal use as being too dull compared to the bright gleam of the prototype rail head that I see daily in Colorado Springs. Perhaps "gleaming" my track may bring it closer to the prototype in my perception. You see it differently.
Then perhaps we need to hook up over at the old depot and take a look at the track together, and you can point out to me what you are seeing - not today though because it's just a bit chilly .
It could be a matter of things like time of day and where the sun is in relation to the tracks.
fwright I have no knowledge of T scale. Lionel introduced Magne-Traction in 1951? by embedding magnets in the axles to improve traction, pulling power, and ability to hug the rails. And it worked (and still does). Magne-Traction requires a magnetic return path of steel ties and rails - it provides no benefits on Atlas 3 rail O nickel silver track with plastic ties - or even GarGraves steel rail track with wood ties.
I'm just beginning to learn about it, but from what I have learned so far, it's so light, that the loco's can't get enough traction for even their own weight, let alone the rest of the cars - so it's the wheels that are magnetic, griping the rails directly, allowing even 45% grades to be climbed. T scale mountain railway
fwright I live in the HO world, you live in N. Perhaps that explains the differences in our perceptions.
I live in the HO world, you live in N. Perhaps that explains the differences in our perceptions.
Quite possibly, but for the record, I'm making the move from N to Z, and from what I'm seeing, and as one moves down in scale, the problems associated with the use of nickel are tending to become more pronounced.
fwright I'm looking at a "super-detailed" Bowser PRR K-4 Pacific and a Spectrum PRR K-4 Pacific side-by-side. The Bowser, all die-cast, is based on tooling from the 1950s. The Spectrum is 1990s plastic technology. The Bowser is by far the better performing locomotive, in all aspects, despite its "primitive" Pittman motor and limited electrical pickup. And the Spectrum is by far the more realistic looking of the two, despite the Bowser's installed super detailing. The Bowser out-weighs, out-pulls, and runs smoother at both low and medium speeds. The Bowser K-4 suffers perhaps 10% of the derailments of the Spectrum on the same track. And I have confidence that with a modicum of care, the Bowser will still be running for my children when I am gone. I don't have that confidence in the Spectrum. But I would put the Spectrum in the display case with a set of passenger cars every time. Visual detractors on the Bowser are the stock brass tender wheels on the pickup side, and black on wheels on the other. If I don't occasionally clean the oxidation off the brass tender wheels and truck bolsters, the locomotive won't run right. The Spectrum has nickel plated tender wheels all around, which do look much better, and don't suffer from the oxidation issues.
I'm looking at a "super-detailed" Bowser PRR K-4 Pacific and a Spectrum PRR K-4 Pacific side-by-side. The Bowser, all die-cast, is based on tooling from the 1950s. The Spectrum is 1990s plastic technology. The Bowser is by far the better performing locomotive, in all aspects, despite its "primitive" Pittman motor and limited electrical pickup. And the Spectrum is by far the more realistic looking of the two, despite the Bowser's installed super detailing. The Bowser out-weighs, out-pulls, and runs smoother at both low and medium speeds. The Bowser K-4 suffers perhaps 10% of the derailments of the Spectrum on the same track. And I have confidence that with a modicum of care, the Bowser will still be running for my children when I am gone. I don't have that confidence in the Spectrum. But I would put the Spectrum in the display case with a set of passenger cars every time.
I wouldn't say that nickel doesn't have problems from oxidation - just that oxidation is less of an issue, because oxides of nickel tend to be more conductive than those of zinc - which begs the question, what about pre oxidizing nickle silver??? Nickle oxide tends to be dark, but still more conductive than oxides from brass and it is not as "slick" as metallic nickel ( put a dime or nickel on a stove burner and heat it until it turns dark to see what I mean ).
fwright In talking to custom loco builders, all know that steel driver tires produce the best traction. But modelers (customers) won't allow the steel tires because of potential rust down the road on a model they are paying many, many hundreds for. The custom builders and very high end brass makers have switched to a workable stainless steel alloy for the driver tires to gain the traction without the corrosion.
I kind of know what you mean, one of my dad's old HO loco's has sintered iron wheels ( the funny thing is, I don't see any of the corrosion to them ) and while it takes some power to get it moving and it tends to throw sparks, once it is moving, it's like it would pull a couple of dozen cars, and still doesn't show any inclination that it's going to stop.
fwright snip And that was my point - almost any alloy selected for rail (or for wheels) has some trade-offs in features and drawbacks. Paul, with his list of criteria, demonstrated that nickel silver is a reasonable compromise. You can improve against some of the criteria with a different rail material. But you will give up some against other criteria. The priority of the criteria is going to vary among individuals. Though I may be speaking wrongly, I believe (opinion here) that most mr's don't care about ultimate traction of their locos - they don't have room to run maximum length trains all the time. Appearance and corrosion/oxidation resistance and ability to solder and price would be the top four attributes for rail for most home layouts. If you can produce something better than nickel silver against those criteria, I'm all ears. You obviously don't like nickel silver rail. What aspects of it are negative enough to you to warrant this thread? Perhaps you might want to research and present some alternatives. In G, track manufacturers use aluminum, nickel silver, and brass for rail. Each has its adherents. In HO and O, brass, mild steel, leaded steel, tin-plated steel, and nickel silver have all been tried. To date, nickel silver has been the rail material of choice.for most. I simply present the data points as historical info so you know what has already been done as you start your quest.
snip
I believe what you are taking as dislike for NS rail, is simply a combination of things starting with an annoyance with manufactures who have a one size fit's all mentality, and my greater annoyance about available selection of products in general. In the last few years, I have noticed that there is a distinct tendency among manufactures to play follow the leader, with minor variations of a theme rather than real independent research and product development.
In no way am I saying that NS is bad, just that it's not suitable for all applications, as it appears ( to me ) that manufactures would have us believe - part of it I suspect is that most manufacturing has moved to China, and as such most companies just do not bother to have in house developmental facilities to work on new things.
The biggest thing that bothers me about NS is, as you have mentioned, how traction was lost with NS rail - especially when NS wheels are used - I'm working on a semi-prototype layout, based on the line over Rollins Pass, prior to the Moffet Tunnel being built and with the loss of traction associated with NS, is not insurmountable - but it is fairly annoying.
Do you have more data on the stainless drive wheels? I suspect that it may prove useful is dealing with loss of traction issues with my layout idea.
rrinker What has changed, simply from Athearn changing, is more nickle-silver wheels and less sintered iron. Sintered iron wheels give greater tractive effort at the cost of electrical contact. Nickle-silver wheels, or at least plated wheels, give a much better contact surface which makes slow speed running more reliable, at the expense of .
What has changed, simply from Athearn changing, is more nickle-silver wheels and less sintered iron. Sintered iron wheels give greater tractive effort at the cost of electrical contact. Nickle-silver wheels, or at least plated wheels, give a much better contact surface which makes slow speed running more reliable, at the expense of .
Ok, real stupid question time --
Why are we stuck with only a "one or the other" approach?
Why not use the best of both?
Why not use NS power pickup wheels, and sintered drivers?
Is there any reason beyond the fact that manufactures appear to be stuck in a rut thinking that electrical pickup and tractive effort, have to be done by the same wheel?
Greg H. fwright DCC is not power handling; it's a control system.... Is not the way power is controlled/used just an aspect of power handling - IOW, the engineering that regulates how power is distributed and used? I grant that while the use of pulsed power and similar were developed earlier, they all relied on regulating the power at the source, and that affected the entire section of track and everything on it - the ability to deliver a constant source and then regulate the power only at the point of use has only been accomplished with DCC - IOW, DC was like trying to control the speed of a motor in your home, by changing the output at the generators at the electric company, while DCC is more like adjusting the speed of your car on the road by changing the throttle settings.
fwright DCC is not power handling; it's a control system....
This is getting off topic, but...the 1st commercial command control system was sold by Lionel - in 1949. Their Electronic Set, advertised as the future brought to the present, ran the engine through a radio frequency link superimposed on the rails, along with the power. Individual on board receivers controlled engine speed, direction, opening coupler knuckles, and causing the coal gondola to dump it's load. The Electronic Set was very expensive for its day, and took some effort to keep transmitters and receivers tuned. The next commercial command control system was GE's Astrac, introduced in 1963 (IIRC). Astrac also used discrete frequencies in the rails as the basis for addressing individual receivers, and put kept track power live at all times. CTC-16 was the 1st command control system I know of to make much of the design information available to those outside the producing company. DCC is about the 4th or 5th command control system, and there are competing proprietary systems out there today (the Aristo radio control and Train Engineer systems come to mind).
Variable voltage AC or DC is not like trying to regulate a hose by voice communications to another human at the faucet. The responses are instantaneous for our purposes, whether the control electronics are on board the locomotive or at the control panel or in a handheld throttle. The speed of electronic communications allows "virtual" presence for control, just as it does for computer networks.
The primary advantage of having the control electronics in the locomotive is individual addressing. Analog AC or DC control all locomotives on the section of track hooked up to the controller identically. Individual addressing allows controlling locomotives independently regardless of whether they are in the same section of track or not. The cost of individual addressing is that the functionality of the control is limited by space available on board and heat dissipation capabilities. That is why transistor throttles could have more control flexibility and tunability than DCC decoders. When you switch from a control box (fixed transistor throttle) to a handheld unit, you usually give up some of the lesser used control functionality for ergonomic reasons. To compete with quality transistor throttles, DCC and other command control systems had to offer reasonable slow speed control.
BEMF and other DCC features are just as practical from an under-the-layout box as they are in the decoder. You are simply trading a more robust comms link for the physical constraints of onboard processing. Neither architecture is necessarily superior - they both have their trade-offs.
More to follow later.
The Lionel system did not control the engine - all it could do was trigger a relay. So it could operate the sequence reverser without interrupting the track power, or it could blow the whistle, or trigger one of the operating cars, or trigger an electromagnet coupler. Train speed was still under control of the speed control on whatever transformer you were using.
I don't think there's the slightest bit of tradeoff when it comes to power. Not when you have decoders smalelr than a dime that can handle 2 amp loads. It' just not an issue these days - the motors in even O scale locos often don't draw that level of current, and in HO and N - half amp these days is a lot.
As for the other idea, mixing wheel types - that might work for a steam loco, but it's a little tough for a diesel. You can certainly try - the Athearn wheelsets are still interchangable so throw a couple pair of sintered wheels on along with the nickel silver ones. It's not just traction and contact - the sintered wheels collect and distribute dirt too.
Greg H.I'm just beginning to learn about it, but from what I have learned so far, it's so light, that the loco's can't get enough traction for even their own weight, let alone the rest of the cars - so it's the wheels that are magnetic, griping the rails directly, allowing even 45% grades to be climbed. T scale mountain railway Quite possibly, but for the record, I'm making the move from N to Z, and from what I'm seeing, and as one moves down in scale, the problems associated with the use of nickel are tending to become more pronounced.
Understanding just a little of N's problems from my work/enjoyment with 19th Century HOn3 and from listening on the forum, I agree that tractive effort of locomotives is lacking in the smaller scales/gauges - and that nickel silver or nickel-plated wheels on nickel silver rail exacerbate the lack of tractive effort issue.
As you have discovered in this thread, the road to the use of nickel in HO came from dissatisfaction with the oxidation and appearance issues of brass, and the propensity of steel to rust. For mainstream HO and N, the loss of tractive effort from nickel is an acceptable trade-off for the improvements in appearance and resistance to oxidation. Although it's a little more likely in N than HO, few expect to run 30 car trains pulled by a single unit on their home layouts. Therefore, the use of nickel is an acceptable trade-off to most.
I believe what you are taking as dislike for NS rail, is simply a combination of things starting with an annoyance with manufactures who have a one size fit's all mentality, and my greater annoyance about available selection of products in general. In the last few years, I have noticed that there is a distinct tendency among manufactures to play follow the leader, with minor variations of a theme rather than real independent research and product development. In no way am I saying that NS is bad, just that it's not suitable for all applications, as it appears ( to me ) that manufactures would have us believe - part of it I suspect is that most manufacturing has moved to China, and as such most companies just do not bother to have in house developmental facilities to work on new things. The biggest thing that bothers me about NS is, as you have mentioned, how traction was lost with NS rail - especially when NS wheels are used - I'm working on a semi-prototype layout, based on the line over Rollins Pass, prior to the Moffet Tunnel being built and with the loss of traction associated with NS, is not insurmountable - but it is fairly annoying. Do you have more data on the stainless drive wheels? I suspect that it may prove useful is dealing with loss of traction issues with my layout idea.
To get more technical information, expand your forum horizons. This is primarily a beginners and intermediate mainstream modelers' forum - as is MR magazine. Some of the Yahoo groups I lurk on to sit at the feet of the masters are Early Rail, HOn3, TOCng, repower and regear, handlaid track, Free-mo, Proto87, 4L, and brass builders. I'm sure there are similar advanced groups for dedicated N, Z, and T modelers.
I see some assumptions implied in your statements that I don't consider valid. You are assuming that mr manufacturers are larger than they are, and have lazy or incompetent R&D efforts. Almost all MR manufacturers (many are actually just importers, not manufacturers) got their start because some individual MR saw a hole in the market or what they considered a poorly-served market for a product they wanted for themselves. They rounded up some friends who might be interested in the same product and found a way to make it without costing more than they were willing to pay - either by finding enough friends to keep the per-unit amortization of fixed costs through a large production run (greater than 1000), or by finding a suitable low cost, low-rate production method. Plastic production uses the large production runs, but even at batches of more than 3000 and Chinese assembly, amortization of die and tooling is a significant part of the total cost. Cast resin or laser-cut wood or etched metal are examples of low-rate production - that don't scale particularly well into large rate production. The amount of R&D that goes into a product is generally limited to the originator's ideas, and the manufacturing process's ability to produce those ideas at reasonable cost. There are no paid MR dedicated R&D jobs that I know of - NWSL being the closest thing to an exception.
Model railroad production is surprisingly price-sensitive. Why don't our everyday engines have turned stainless steel drivers, NWSL-quality gears, and coreless motors? Because enough mr's won't pay another $150 per locomotive (beyond today's prices) to get the extra quality in a large production run. If you want $1,000+ locomotives you can incorporate the improvements at that price point - but the price point will necessitate hand assembly and machining because you are only to sell 50 units at that price point.
Track has the same economics issues. Try to get some rail drawn by a foundry in less than 10 1:1 mile batches at a reasonable price. And based on the reaction of this thread, how much of that rail are you going to sell if it's not made from nickel silver? Plastic tie strip has similar minimum economic quantities because of the tooling needed. Unless you are the sole track supplier to all 1000 Z gauge or 200 T gauge modelers, you end up with selling laser or saw cut wood ties to mount your exotic rail on - and it needs to be hand glued (or soldered) because you can't sell enough to even amortize a machine to do the gluing (or soldering). Your gluing (or soldering) process needs to be good enough to stand up to shipping and handling and long term abuse by mr's, lest your product get a poor reputation for durability.
Model railroading manufacturing is generally a thankless task. Many a master mr has quit producing products because of the verbal abuse he gets from his fellow hobbyists over prototype accuracy, prices, and support services (which are not free to produce even if we want them to be). Add in production process yield and batch size issues - and what was a fun hobby gets turned into a business with little reward.
But don't let me dissuade you from producing new products for the market. If you truly have a good idea that will improve the current situation, go for it. Here in Colorado, there is a surprisingly strong network of small mr producers and service providers. And we have Caboose Hobbies and other established retail venues willing to help sell new products.
my thoughts, your choices