Looking for train camera reviews.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone tried out one of those micro cameras that mount on rolling stock? How good is the picture?
Lionel sold something similar a long time ago but it was said the picture was poor at best.

[MisterBeasley]

Tony's Trains has a number of pages on their web site devoted to these. Go there and search for "camera" and you'll find it. Installation pictures, some technical information and a short video from the cab.

I started a similar topic a while back. Lots of good replies, so you might want to check it out:

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=-1&TOPIC_ID=29384&REPLY_ID=298159#298159

[Javern]

I bought one of Ebay, a wireless color version. Mounted it in a boxcar. Picture is very good quality. Good lighting is a must.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Folks!

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by gsetter

Has anyone tried out one of those micro cameras that mount on rolling stock? How good is the picture?
Lionel sold something similar a long time ago but it was said the picture was poor at best.

I watched one of the train cameras in action on the Lionel layout in Balboa park last year and it was great. Remember, this is a three rail layout, sort of O scale and the camera might be larger, but the effect was good and enjoyable.

I did not ask if it was Lionel or some other brand, but it was interesting.

[Anonymous]

http://www.dpaton.net/hobbies/trains/traincam.shtml

Mine works OK. Not well, not poorly, just OK. I spent about $60 total. I'm planning on doing another with a much better camera and tx/rx setup so that I can get a higher resolution picture with more dynamic range, but for now, this one tickles me to no end. It really does change the way you run your trains. 400mph from an unmodified Hustler looks soooooo much faster from the cab of a disabled F7 [:D]

-dave

[medic_149]

go to www.super-cam.com. You can get a dvd mailed to you with a preview of the camera in use on a ho model railroad. From this you can evaluate and then order if you like..hope this helps

[Anonymous]

I am a member of the Stoney Creek Model RR Club (HO), Rochester, MI. After one of our members bought a camera thru Micro Mark, we used it for a month while we had our club layout on display at a local museum. It was a great hit. The picture was excellent and we were using it with the layout operating in a large area. The length of the run would put the camera, mounted on a flat car about 75 feet from the receiver and reception was very good. Adults and kids visiting the layout would stand on the return loops just to see themselves.

It was such a hit, out club bought its own unit. We mounted it in a dummy F Unit which we use in the A (front) pushing it with a powered unit. Last week our layout was on display at a model RR show/swap meet in McComb County, MI. Again it was a great hit with attendees. The camera has done everything we wanted.

We have also used the camera on various member's layouts. We record the trip around the layout thru the VCR/receiver. This has been a bit hit with the members. On one occasion, a switch on the main was turned to a siding. We were watching monitor while the train was travelling on the layout, and witnessed it going into the siding and hitting a parked RR car. Needless to say we had a lot of fun with that, ie accident board review with taped evidence.

We only had one problem. A visit took a flash of the engine containing the camera and it immediately shut down. We thought we had blown the camera lense. However, we disconnected the unit, reconected and it operating just fine.

Rad Jones

[nobullchitbids]

I can ditto the comments of the last post, upon seeing a similar operation on a traveling Sn3 layout in Connecticut. Everything he said is true, and the kids really got off on seeing themselves on TV.

[Medina1128]

Thanks to medic_149 for the link. I've ordered my free video..

[bobjgroton]

The Nashua Valley Railroad Association's New England Rail layout (featured in September 2002 issue of Model Railroader) has been using TV cameras for a few years now and they work great. They are a hit at both our own open houses and at the Amherst Railway Society show each winter. I'm not one of the techies on the project but I'm sure we can link you up with someone if you want to know more. The club web site is http://www.nvrra.org/ and you can contact us through there.

The latest cameras are inside diesel locomotive cabs (I don't know if the latest units are powered or if we're still using dummies) but the cameras are now so small that I wouldn't be surprised if we're putting them in large steam locomotives within the year. I do know that the biggest issues you run into are antenna on the locomotive, the receiving antenna somewhere in the layout room (for your video monitor), and powering the camera/transmitter (we used batteries for a long time but the latest ones somehow work off our DCC rails). We use strictly "normal" layout lighting and can see quite a bit in tunnels -- the camera is a good way to check on clearances and other issues in areas our 1:1 scale heads can't readily get into!

[JimValle]

The First State Model RR Club put one of these cameras in a dummy F unit and used it at two Greenberg shows. our modular layout is an 80' X 16' "racetrack oval". I agree with the other commentators that it was a big hit with the public and with our club members but I thought the picture was bad, dark and not very high res. Also when the train went over rail joints and switches there was a tendency for the screen to "white out", that is show a series of white flashes until things smoothed out again. Looking at it for any length of time gave me a headache. Ours was battery powered so perhaps not the latest model. I think they have a long way to go yet.

[Anonymous]

one of the members of our club brought one of those cameras to the club in december for two weeks. we ended up with 2 hours of vidio, and it is great. his cam is mounted in the nose of an f7. we ran the train in one direction one week and the other direction the next. picture a 2-8-0 pulling 23 art refers and another 2-8-0 pushing on the rear, at track level. it is neat. scotty4

[jwr_1986]

I would love to do something like that at our clb but I heard a rumor once that many of these operate on the same frequency as the Digitrax A band Radio throttles. Until I have a difinitive answer on that I won't be trying them. The idea in itself though is simply cool. There was a member of our club that owned his own studio and he set up one back in the eighties that worked great. i only saw the video but it looked very cool.

Jesse

[gerzbok]

I also bought one off of eBay and it works very well. I have used it at our local museum display and everyone loves it. I do get a little flickering from time to time but I think that is interference because I don't have the antenna on the receiver high enough. I think on a home layout (which I do not have yet) you would want to mount the receiver on a wall as high as possible.

[pcman43]

One of our club members bough one of these cameras also. It works OK not really great but OK, the picture quality is pretty good and the view is almost like being there, but the picture has a lot of interference of some kind. We thought it might be the metal wheelsets rolling on the track causing rolling harmonics i.e. (white noise) , but that was not the case. We also tried to isolate the track power from controlling the camera by adding a battery pack, but still had the same interference. We moved the antenna up high and still had the problem, tried to run the car without the body so we could raise the antenna higher up above the other cars and engine still had the problem. But all in all the picture was really nice at track level, it gave you a whole new perspective while running trains.

[Anonymous]

The video portion of a television signal is amplitude modulated, and can be susceptible to electrical interferance, such arcing wheels on the track or motor brushes. If you have of these units try placeing a small ceramic capacitor across the motor leeds. (about 0.01 microfafads)

[Anonymous]

Ferrite beads inline with the motor leads may work better than caps across them, especially for DCC. Capacitance can cause problems with DCC The H-bridges in the decoders really dislike that kind of load.
Dropping a cap across the power leads to the camera very very close to the case, along with inline ferrites very close to said leads, did the job for me. I'll see if I can grab some pictures today.

-dave

[Trainman2001]

I have one with sound that I bought at York last Fall for $99. It is good enough, in fact it is miraculous, considering what these things cost just a few years before. I have a hi-rail O'Gauge pike and the camera is mounted through the front wall of an old Weaver Box Car about cab height so the point of view is like sitting in the cab of an F-7. One problem is not with the camera but in the nature of how it's mounted.

Being fixed to the car body, it always points straight ahead. This is terrific on straight sections, but not so good on curves since the camera tends to point out into space. Two possible solutions come to mind. Both include mounting on a flat car.

One. articulate the camera mount with a linkage arranagement with the truck rotation enabling the camera to point around the bend like we would if we were the engineer. I am going to design this arrangement and see if it works.

Two, mount the camera directly on the output wheel of an RC car or plane servo. Use a cheap radio control unit to turn the camera independenlty of the trains direction. This would give the "ultimate cinematographic control" and would allow you to pan stations as you go by, or follow trains on the other track as they pass. It would be cool and not too expensive.

Myles Marcovitch