Thanks to Trolleyboy's post last week, I ordered one of these and got it last night. It's a nice little unit, and I think it will be a fine addition to my layout.
I got the Undecorated model, because I'll be painting and decalling it to match my Moose Bay Transit Authority fleet. (Well, it will be the second in the "fleet.") This is the first time I've bought an undecorated car.
It is by no means ready-to-run out of the box. There's a lot of small-parts assembly, mostly details. It will make the trolley easier to paint, of course, because I don't have to worry about painting around light frames and windows. What surprised me is that there was no step-by-step text document in the box, only a few exploded diagrams. Some of the parts will be tricky to identify, I suspect.
So, on to the questions:
First, for anyone who has one of these pre-painted - did you have significant assembly, or is that a characteristic of the Undecorated model only?
For anyone who has one, either pre-painted or not - Did it come with any instructions, other than the exploded diagram? In other words, did they leave something out of mine?
Finally, what is the long, thin mesh thing for? It looks like a roofwalk, but the diagram makes it look like it mounts on the left side of the car somehow.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I believe the painted models come fully assembled, like any other Bachmann engine. Undecorated models from most or all manufacturers come with the details unassembled for easier painting.
Bachmann only gives exploded diagrams with their products, since they're usually fully assembled.
I think that long mesh is a see-through window blind, so passengers can look through the windows without having bright sunlight in their eyes. I was just on a bus last week that had them.
You can get pictures of the assembled models at Bachmann's or Walthers's websites for reference, like this one here: http://walthers.com/exec/productinfo/160-84602.
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Thanks. That pretty much answers all my questions.
For those who are interested, the model has a very tiny slide switch on the bottom that allows you to choose either track power or overhead power. Although I won't use that myself, I thought it was a nice thing to do for the really serious traction types.
From what I have seen, the painted units are fully ready to go. I will be picking mine up soon and can tell you more about what I find on it.
Undecorated models of rolling stock tend to be in a disassembled state.
Bachmann has a forums page that is pretty supportive of those Witt cars.
Without having seen the mesh in question, I believe it's a screen that runs along the bottom of the window to prevent people putting their arms outside. Lots of early streetcars had them.
I'm not sure why they disappeared, perhaps to enable escape in the event of an accident or fire.
Jim
dieselsmoke wrote: Without having seen the mesh in question, I believe it's a screen that runs along the bottom of the window to prevent people putting their arms outside. Lots of early streetcars had them.I'm not sure why they disappeared, perhaps to enable escape in the event of an accident or fire.Jim
If it only goes on the left-hand side, it's there to prevent people from high-fiving their buddies on cars going the other way.
I remember them on both sides of the cars I rode as a boy - but those cars ran under an L structure with close clearance on both sides.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
In Toronto & Hamilton Ontario, both single & double ended cars had screens or bars on both sides. It also kept heads inside thus preventing a fatality.
Hey Mr B glad you liked the kit enought o buy one. Just to expand on that fence it was a saftey fence for most companies put on the left side of the cars. In 1921 talking TTC and Toronto the Witt's were the first cars orderd by the TTC.Previous to 1921 Toronto's street railways were operated by four different companies, once they were all amalgamated into the TTC the new company had a pile of incompatible cars types so the witts were the answer to streamlinning the parts department among other things. they put the screens on the left sides as the Witt's roamed system wide but on the old Toronto railway Company lines Yonge street when it was a surface route etc , the clearances were so tight that it would have been a hazzard to have one's arm out the window in the doubled tracked areas if another Witt was heading in the oposite direction. After the line rebuilds in the thirties the catching problem was solved as they widdened the ROW,they took the fences off in the thirties though as one of the 2400 series Witts hit a truck and caught fire , what protected people also trapped people in a burning streetcar.If anyone is interested I did a couple short posts on the TTC and it's beginnings over on the Classic trains forum in the Our Place thread.
Rob
OK, I've taken another step. I loosely installed the circuit board, and plugged in the wiring harness from the chassis, plus the decoder. I programmed and read back the address, and it looks like the trolley works just fine.
This model comes with a Bachmann decoder. In the earlier Peter Witt thread, someone said that it wasn't quite a standard decoder. I've noticed that the interior lights come on with the F0 headlight key, but that they are dimmed by the F1 key, normally the bell in a sound-equipped unit. I do plan to replace the decoder with sound, so I'm hoping this isn't a problem.
Does anyone know if the interior lights are wired in a strange way, like to one of the other function outputs of the decoder?
This eBay auction has excellent closeup pictures.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Spectrum-HO-Peter-Witt-St-Car-DCC-Interior-Light
Jim is right; the mesh is there to keep HO scale hands and heads inside the streetcar.
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
This is a good picture set in that auction. Sadly I think the cost is either the exchange rate at work against the US dollar or a little profiteering.
Those pictures are identical to what I have seen with the Baltimore Trolley waiting for me downtown, I just hope that I can assign it an address on those bachmann decoders.
Falls Valley RR wrote: Those pictures are identical to what I have seen with the Baltimore Trolley waiting for me downtown, I just hope that I can assign it an address on those bachmann decoders.
I had no problem assigning mine to "44." I didn't try a 4-digit address.
I have the trolley here at home today and it is a wonderful little machine.
The only nitpick is the string that holds the trolley pole. You can place the pole into a small metal clip designed to keep it stowed. But the thread that holds it loop hangs a bit much.
I did not yet run the thing because track is literally under construction for some time.
I'm not using DCC yet , but ahs anyone seen or heard of an HO soundchip for these cars yet
trolleyboy wrote:I'm not using DCC yet , but has anyone seen or heard of an HO soundchip for these cars yet
I was wondering the same thing, since Bachmann saw fit to put speaker holes in the floor.
SteamFreak wrote: trolleyboy wrote:I'm not using DCC yet , but has anyone seen or heard of an HO soundchip for these cars yet I was wondering the same thing, since Bachmann saw fit to put speaker holes in the floor.
Perhaps a later run is comming out sound equiped like alot of their steam engines have. I've been all over their website, and on OSI's and the other big sound chip makers. No one yet has announced anything. A wait and see. I hope that , concidering the quality of this model I hope that they continue on with others.
Well, mine showed up at the LHS a couple of weeks ago, and I've got it painted, decalled and assembled. These are home-made decals for the Moose Bay Transit Authority.
There's a speaker and sound decoder on order. I'm going to install the new Digitrax SFX0416, which is a sound-only decoder with a couple of extra function outputs. It's also programable, so I'm going to install a traction "sound project" that's available at the Digitrax site. The decoder just needs power, so it should be compatable with the Bachmann decoder that came with the trolley.
I've still got to put the passengers inside, and install a few detail parts on the shell. I'm going to wait until the sound stuff comes in before I do that, though.
Nice paint job Mr B keep us posted on the soundchip.I'm wondering are you able to record your own sounds and then load them onto existing sound decoders. The only reason I'm asking is two fold.#1 I'm a member of the Halton County Museum in Ontario and we have three operable Witt's that could be recorded,we also have a bunch of 33 RPM records that we have sold in the gift shop for years that the one side is a Witt car sound track and the B side is a PCC.I had heard somewhere that you could buy decoders and then add sound to them anyone no if that is or isn't false ?
There is uploadable sounds possible these days.
The way I learned about it is this:
PCM Reading T1 had Nick Kulp releasing sound files in a format designed to be downloaded first onto a computer off the internet. Thence to a software app/hardware program track that is plugged into the computer.
Uploading the sound into the engine is then possible. You can replace the whistle with the sound of Pigs if you wanted to. Not that such activity is recommended.
There are too many options for the different manufactors, Digitrax, LokSound, QSI etc to explain in one post but most all of them involve some kind of computer connection; software tied to the program track to upload to engines.
For me, QSI is very easy, pull old chip and replace it with upgrade chip or... buy latest QSI factory installed engines. It is just like replacing a computer CPU on a motherboard die.
This is a "sound project" which is available on the Digitrax site:
http://www.digitrax.com/depot_traction.php
This is an assembled set of sounds. The Digitrax "Soundloader" software can be used to read the file, display the contents and play the individual sounds. This will run on a PC. It's designed to operate with the Digitrax PR-2 programming module, which will download the sound files to a decoder. You can listen to the sounds without a PR-2, though.
http://www.digitrax.com/prd_compint_soundloader.php
If this works out well, I might put sound in my Bowser PCC:
How different are the sounds of a PCC and a Witt? The sound project above is kind of generic, but it might be fun to customize each unit.
Then, I've got a couple of Life-Like R-17 trains. These aren't trolleys, though, so I'm thinking of how to get sounds for them.
Mister Beasley,
Awesome job on the trolley! You may want to check out soundrangers.com's website. There are a bunch of subway sound effects. I am currently fiddling with a few for my inconstruction subway stations. What I am considering is not onboard sound for the subways, but rather a stationary system that will play the arriving, stop, door open, door close, depart sounds as a train enters the station, stops and pulls out. I am in the process of fiddling with a couple of inexpensive digital voice recorders to see how it all might work. What makes using preset recordings difficult is that a prototype subway is much longer than the couple of cars that I am using. Hopefully this can be fixed with some audio editing, but that part of the project is still in the "wait till I get to it" stage.
Thanks for the input guys,food for thought.Mr B the sound of the PCC and the Witt are quite different.The Witt's tend to "grumble" for lack of a better term due to the older style gearing and the type of controllers they use, PCC's kind of "whoosh" not a technical term I knoow but at the end of the day they do sound quite different. Even Witt to Witt can sound different as well. All four witt's which the museum has ( three run ) are all ex TTC units two smalls 2894 and 2786 and two larges 2424 and 2984. The large Witts were built for trailer pulling and had larger gears slower speed gearing and they tended to have much lower noises, whines etc. The small Witt's ( which the bachman model is ) were built for speed and had helical gearing in the trucks which gave them a higher pitched gear and motor noise. Symantics I know as most poeple are not going to know the difference or care.The Witt's had air brakes as well which most PCC's didn't as most PCC's were all electric ( some early ones were air brake equiped as well ) so Witt's will need compressor sounds as well, were as your PCC likely won't. I know I've muddied the waters again.