PaulJL... and fed into JMRI Operations Pro.
This itself brings up a potential issue, as Java itself has been appreciably deprecated, and if it is to continue to be supported in the MR community (and I think it clearly should be) it would make sense to 'fork' it or even develop a Linux-style open-source clone or interpreter and standardize further platform development around that.
In this age of high-speed, ultra-low-power electronics it is very easy both to code new functionality and provide essentially perfect emulation if any tired old DCC-style standard for wireless implementation. Likewise providing polyspectral radio access would have been an expensive thing to provide if it had to be designed and fabbed only for the model-railroad market -- when you have not only other forms of RC models but popular 'entertainment and communication' devices subsidizing the cost of appropriate cores, we can start asking 'why not the best?' without having too many hard sectional battles about whether there has to be a hard One True Meaning of 'best' in the hobby.
Allegheny1633What I would love to see is another (I believe) physical impossibility - that of 'scale' smoke!
Scale smoke is a cinch (you adapt the technique used in military installations for cooling 'time-stabilized' high-power electronics, "printing" color and neutral as appropriate, and use multiple timed jets and a Venturi in the stack to get the speed, punch, and shape). It is getting rid of the smoke in a confined layout/room volume, or getting the color to dissipate without winding up staining things you don't want stained, that are the problem. I would note that good crossflow laminar ventilation in the layout room would solve this, but in the current COVID-19 environment it may be a while before the required equipment to do this shows up in the 'Bay within even an order of magnitude of price modelers would pay. (And even then operators might need little spray cans of compressed air-clearing potential like a physical delete key for the effect of a given 'smoke show')
wjstix In years past, I know some DC O scale engines have been adapted to "coast" - if you cut the power, the motor / gears don't lock up, so the engine gradually rolls to a stop. Something like that could work in HO...
In years past, I know some DC O scale engines have been adapted to "coast" - if you cut the power, the motor / gears don't lock up, so the engine gradually rolls to a stop. Something like that could work in HO...
There are a few HO brass models available with a coasting drive. All that I know of were produced by Samhongsa and imported by Key in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.
Edit: I checked the brass guide at brasstrains.com, searching for "coasting drive" in HO. I got 174 hits, also from importers other than Key. They command substantial prices (in the $1,000 range for 25-30 year old models).
I think more likely than a switch to dead rail being standard might be sort of a hybrid, sort of an advanced version of today's "keep alive" where the engines have batteries that recharge from the DCC power - but unlike "keep alives", the batteries could run for say an hour or two if necessary. That would maybe not change how engines work, but would make lighting cars, cabooses etc. a lot better.
In years past, I know some DC O scale engines have been adapted to "coast" - if you cut the power, the motor / gears don't lock up, so the engine gradually rolls to a stop. Something like that could work in HO - along with working brakes. Yes you can simulate that with CV3 and CV4 and having a function button "brake", but it would be interesting to see if it wouldn't replicate real train operations to have to say be cautious going down a grade with a train lest your trains runs out of control.
I think two-way DCC will probably improve, so you could have a grade crossing where when the crossing software is triggered, it not only begins lowering the gates and flashing the crossbucks, but sends a message to the locomotive to sound the grade crossing two longs - short - long whistle or horn.
A little over 100 years ago, Carl Benz said that the automobile was at the height of its development and no further innovation was required. In 1895, his competitor and later business partner Gottlieb Daimler is said to have said, the the world does not need more than 5,000 automobiles.
Both were proven wrong in a short time.
I am not the one to predict which way the technology will head in our hobby. I don´t think that dead rail is a dead end, as it is widely used already - in individual conversions in nearly all scales. It may become an industry standard - who is the one to deny that? We all agree that there needs to be some kind of a standard. I am sure someone within the NEM or MOROP is already working on such a standard.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
Hi All,
I've read through this thread with some interest and amusement. I do agree with the comments about sound technology being about as good as it can possibly get, simply because of the physics of it all.
What I would love to see is another (I believe) physical impossibility - that of 'scale' smoke! Have you ever seen a 'smoking' locomotive steam or diesel, that looks even remotely realistic in H0 scale? Gauge 1 German outline steamers, yes, definitely but no such thing in H0.
I have a couple of ESU's own fully DCC diesel locos and don't even use the smoke as it's useless! The sound however, is excellent.
Also, these locos have really good onboard capacitors that allow them to roll easily over dead sections of track - up to a good six inches or more (I haven't fully explored their limits).
For this reason, I really believe all this talk of dead rail is simply a dead end!
John.
SeeYou190 GERRY DERIDDER Imagine if they had gone from dc to rc instead of super charging old dc technology. R/C that recharges from the rails would be perfect for me. I doubt that will become a retro-fittable mass produced product line in my lifetime. -Kevin
GERRY DERIDDER Imagine if they had gone from dc to rc instead of super charging old dc technology.
R/C that recharges from the rails would be perfect for me.
I doubt that will become a retro-fittable mass produced product line in my lifetime.
-Kevin
I have always been a fan of direct radio as a means of control, whether the power comes from a battery or from the track, or both.
Sheldon
I'd like to see advancement in the area of "detection" of trains, perhaps some form of GPS or RFID. The identification, location and motion of all trains down to the inch (not just block level) shown on a monitor screen track plan. This would also control signaling.
Along with that I like to have all rolling stock tagged and located on the layout with inventory automatically updated by computer and fed into JMRI Operations pro. Probably with RFID detectors along the track.
All of this can be done to a degree right now with a lot of work, both paperwork and wiring.
With modern technology, a combination of GPS, RFID, and computer visual recognition, it is doable.
Paul
Living the dream.
wrench567 I got to toss my 2 cents in. Wireless lights, miniature steam generators and double acting cylinders. All powered by some sort of Tesla wireless power. Controlled by chips implanted in our heads. Pete
I got to toss my 2 cents in.
Wireless lights, miniature steam generators and double acting cylinders. All powered by some sort of Tesla wireless power. Controlled by chips implanted in our heads.
Pete
Heaven forbid!
Paul3, your comments on RaiPro are right on, IMO. I don't have any market share numbers to point at, but they are currently trying to attract G scale rather than downsize loco modules to N-scale. Don't really understand their marketing at all. Current price point is not competitive, and they must be afraid of growing the company. Hard to believe they wouldn't have the technical expertise to continue expanding the product line! Oh, well, they could be the next "big thing"!!
Heck, if I were they, I would probably be cautious also!
Cid (Memphis, Tennessee)
Drumguy I want to know who the heck coined the term "dead rail" and thought it had a chance of catching on with that name. Dead. Deceased. Inert. Non functioning. Shuffled off its mortal coil! Howzabout something positive like free rail or open rail, whatever. This is mareketing 101. Imagine a kid looking at some starter train sets and one says Digital Command Control! And the other says Dead Rail! Unless the dead rail set has some tie in with The Waking Dead, it stays on the shelf. As far as speakers, I've got the Rolling Thunder thing, and while cool, it suffers from the gap in frequency between what the loco can produce, and the upper limit of non directional low res sound from the subwoofer. It's a significant gap. In HO scale, it seems if there is enough room for a depleting coal load ther would be enough room for a ported speaker enclosure. Yes there is a physical limit to the freqiency our small speakers can produce, but a properly engineered enclosure with ports might bridge that gap. A port is simply a hole(s) and tube(s) of a specific diameter and depth for a given speaker and enclosure that significantly increases efficiency and Low end. Dedicated sound only B units would have plenty of room. Not gonna be perfect or full range, but has a chance of being much better Than a speaker without it.
I want to know who the heck coined the term "dead rail" and thought it had a chance of catching on with that name. Dead. Deceased. Inert. Non functioning. Shuffled off its mortal coil! Howzabout something positive like free rail or open rail, whatever. This is mareketing 101. Imagine a kid looking at some starter train sets and one says Digital Command Control! And the other says Dead Rail! Unless the dead rail set has some tie in with The Waking Dead, it stays on the shelf.
As far as speakers, I've got the Rolling Thunder thing, and while cool, it suffers from the gap in frequency between what the loco can produce, and the upper limit of non directional low res sound from the subwoofer. It's a significant gap. In HO scale, it seems if there is enough room for a depleting coal load ther would be enough room for a ported speaker enclosure. Yes there is a physical limit to the freqiency our small speakers can produce, but a properly engineered enclosure with ports might bridge that gap. A port is simply a hole(s) and tube(s) of a specific diameter and depth for a given speaker and enclosure that significantly increases efficiency and Low end. Dedicated sound only B units would have plenty of room. Not gonna be perfect or full range, but has a chance of being much better Than a speaker without it.
Having designed and built ported (and sealed) hifi speaker systems for about 45 years now, and having followed and studied the advancement of that science during that time, I can tell you that it just ain't going to happen in HO.
The way sound waves are created, and the way our ears hear, and room acoustics effect those waves, and the physical length of a sound wave below 400 Hz, make it beyond any current technology to get much below that level from a speaker that will fit in an HO locomotive, port or no port.
The port uses a resonance frequency of the driver to progressively add the rear energy to to front energy, but in phase. It depends on three things, the resonance peak of the speaker, created by its impedance vs its mass, the mass of the air in the box, and the mass of the air in the port.
The range of frequencies below the resonance point that the port will reinforce is limited.
So you have to get down low enough to begin with, at least down around 200 Hz. The smallest somewhat effective ported enclosures I have ever heard are still about the size of a G scale box car, and they only get down around 100 Hz before dropping off.
The next problem is getting that same speaker to reproduce high frequencies......
The best sounding speakers still require boxes with volumes of 1 to 2 cubic feet, despite all the advancements....
Paul3, I have taken a cursory look at it, but realized that if it were not an industry standard with the model railroad world jumping on it, it would be insurmountable for me to even take a serious look at it.
No reflection on the product, just that it's not mainstream and for me not worth trying to get into.
Deane Johnson,Are you familiar with RailPro? It's direct radio control and can run on DC rail, DCC rail, and DC battery power. It's a very nice system and has been on the market for at least 9 years. Yet few people use it. I certainly don't know of any, personally. Sure, there's some online that do on this forum, but they aren't taking much market share away from DCC (or DC). Why? It's more advanced than DCC, it does more than DCC, it will run on anything, wiring is a snap, and so on. But it's not an NMRA Standard and it's not cheap ($300 for a throttle, $60 for a non-sound receiver).Tinplate Toddler,Still no answers?And again, not every technical achievement is popular or needed. You sound like the guys that were promoting DCC car uncouplers without acknowleding the expense, complexity, or the actual use of it.BATMAN,Your question is one I've been asking about for a while. How many charges can a battery take before it dies completely?According to Ring Engineering's website (the makers of RailPro), they say, "Typical number of recharges for today’s batteries is about 300-500 charges. A HO locomotive could need charged several times a day. If that were the case, you would need to replace the batteries after only a few months! Imagine the cost an work involved." [sic]
Sheldon,Capacitors offer a better solution than batteries. I have a capacitor in one of my 0-8-0's, and that engine will continue to run at least 5 seconds (possibly more) after it's removed from the track. That's enough to get it over any dead frog or minor dead spot. And for a steam switcher, that's great.
NittanyLion I don't want to know how much a Tissot EM-1 2-8-8-4 would run.
Granted you will need a MUCH larger self-winding track to keep it wound overnight. And you would be wise not to drop it even if it has full nominal 'anti-choc' protection...
Tinplate Toddler Sometimes I get the impression that we are just a bunch of old geezers in this forum who are stuck in the "good old days". Thank goodness we are already beyond clockwork drives.
Sometimes I get the impression that we are just a bunch of old geezers in this forum who are stuck in the "good old days". Thank goodness we are already beyond clockwork drives.
As Carly Simon sang, "these are the good ol days".
Anyway, dead rail hasn't become the defacto standard and that still looks to be some time off. Wake me up when things have changed significantly.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Overmod Tinplate Toddler ... actually, some of those clockwork drives were quite sophisticated, with a number of different speeds to select, from mainline high speed down to yardwork crawl. I'd like to see what the Welte people, or watchmakers of skill like Vaucanson, might have produced in building miniature spring-driven proportional control ... quite possibly with electric remote changing of settings. Some of the metallurgy and physics of the late '60-hour' generation of watch mainsprings might have been useful ... as would periodic electric rewinding using cheap constant-speed motor, as on a Varityper, but that's a different issue. People have largely forgotten that for most of a century today's expression "pushing a button" was expressed as 'touching a spring'. Even as late as Forster's The Machine Stops the assumption is that much of the operation would be mechanical. I was going to comment on some of the great potential danger of allowing collector specialization into brass. We have already seen railroad book prices and many types of railroad watch prices driven out of reason by the collector 'infrastructure' and its predatory assumptions. I saw a very similar issue to white-elephant brass come up in real estate in the '60s and '70s, and it would be sad to contemplate a world in which brass is again inaccessible to actual modelers who need a specific prototype... ... but now I wonder: what if we do what the Swiss and other Europeans have done, at much higher prices, with complicated watches? Build precise replicas full of prototype operating features (not just modified toy-train gimcrackery) with best materials, full support for maintenance and repair, and even best-practices 'artist' weathering. If you have to have twee people raking off double-digit buyer/seller premiums and profit margins, why not have at least a few 'hyper-Crown' examples to show... and who knows? there may be enough status-conscious nouveau-riches out there in the New Economy to sustain a whole high-end industry!
Tinplate Toddler ... actually, some of those clockwork drives were quite sophisticated, with a number of different speeds to select, from mainline high speed down to yardwork crawl.
I'd like to see what the Welte people, or watchmakers of skill like Vaucanson, might have produced in building miniature spring-driven proportional control ... quite possibly with electric remote changing of settings. Some of the metallurgy and physics of the late '60-hour' generation of watch mainsprings might have been useful ... as would periodic electric rewinding using cheap constant-speed motor, as on a Varityper, but that's a different issue.
People have largely forgotten that for most of a century today's expression "pushing a button" was expressed as 'touching a spring'. Even as late as Forster's The Machine Stops the assumption is that much of the operation would be mechanical.
I was going to comment on some of the great potential danger of allowing collector specialization into brass. We have already seen railroad book prices and many types of railroad watch prices driven out of reason by the collector 'infrastructure' and its predatory assumptions. I saw a very similar issue to white-elephant brass come up in real estate in the '60s and '70s, and it would be sad to contemplate a world in which brass is again inaccessible to actual modelers who need a specific prototype...
... but now I wonder: what if we do what the Swiss and other Europeans have done, at much higher prices, with complicated watches? Build precise replicas full of prototype operating features (not just modified toy-train gimcrackery) with best materials, full support for maintenance and repair, and even best-practices 'artist' weathering. If you have to have twee people raking off double-digit buyer/seller premiums and profit margins, why not have at least a few 'hyper-Crown' examples to show... and who knows? there may be enough status-conscious nouveau-riches out there in the New Economy to sustain a whole high-end industry!
Knowing how much my Tissot Powermatic Le Locle cost, I don't want to know how much a Tissot EM-1 2-8-8-4 would run.
I wonder many amp battery you could cram into a steam tender of say a 2-10-4?
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
In the 1960s, Mr. Egger introduced HOn30 trains into the European market. Unfortunately, the business was rather shortlived and in 1967, the line of products was taken over by the French firm Jouef, which today is a part of Hornby. After a few years only, these cute little trains disappeared from the market, but were resurrected by a Swiss guy, who built precision drives for them. They are still available - at unbelievable prices!
Tinplate Toddler... actually, some of those clockwork drives were quite sophisticated, with a number of different speeds to select, from mainline high speed down to yardwork crawl.
As to the charging question, there are four alternatives:
1. a powered track section where you park your locomotive and charge it.
2. induction charging at a specific spot on the layout or off
3. a plug port to plug in the battery
4. remove the battery and place it in a charger
The first two are the most popular because they can be set up to work without having to handle the locomotive.
And yes, adding all of this stuff greatly complicates the models, increasing the price and the number of parts that can break. Some people like tinkering with electronics and that's what drives them in this hobby. Some people want to have all of the features available no matter what.
I don't think any of this technology is going to become the standard, just options for people who want them and want to pay for them, or build them into their models themselves.
Eric
Larry - actually, some of those clockwork drives were quite sophisticated, with a number of different speeds to select, from mainline high speed down to yardwork crawl. Easy to use, even off grid, ecologically friendly, no track cleaning required.
Tinplate Toddler Sometimes I get the impression that we are just a bunch of old geezers in this forum who are stuck in the "good old days". Thank goodness we are already beyond clockwork drives!
Sometimes I get the impression that we are just a bunch of old geezers in this forum who are stuck in the "good old days". Thank goodness we are already beyond clockwork drives!
Eh, my clock work choo-choos still works.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
rrinkerotherwise it is a lot like an air starter on a truck
I have not seen an air starter on a truck since the 1980s.
In The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2) it is always funny to me that when he gets the abandoned highway tractor running in the desert it has an air starter... never would have happened!
Some industrial engines that are installed in large facilities with a huge compressed air (or other gas) supply still use them. Some stationary applications use them in "zero electric" set-ups. These are started by a service truck with a 2" air hose from a large compressor.
I have heard they are still used in arctic conditions where batteries will not work in the extreme cold. Not a problem in my climate.