See photos of gates on my website
I built circuits to kill the apporach tracks, then I realised that since half of all moves will be BACKING on to the elevator the dead sections will need to be 2 metres long. On my little layout that ain't gonna work, so i now rely entirely on the physical gates and, later, signals
I recall following the earliest parts of this thread with fascination, and (sort of) heaving a sigh of relief when the vertical drawer slide system finally emerged. OTOH, since my situation allows the elevator end to move in an arc rather than a straight line I'm going with John Armstrong's, "Dehydrated canal lock," to move unit trains as part of an empties in/loads out scene at a large colliery. Automation will be provided by a large handle, readily moveable by the same 0-5-0 that controls the locomotive and turnouts. A combination of gates and track circuitry will keep operators from trying to load or unoad an elevator that isn't there.
The plan SEEMS straightforward and almost idiot-proof. It will probably be a couple of years before the world will know if this idiot can actually make it work.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
robengland wrote:Hi folks.I'm building a train lift (elevator) to carry trains from lower deck staging to upper deck railroad in an around-the-walls shelf layout. I've been wrestling with the track plan to cram staging, mainline, city, port and a steam museum into a little 10'x10' study, and I decided that to have what i want the staging just has to be on a second level with the main deck flat, not consumed by lots of up and down grades to and from the staging. So then it came down to a few options: 1) helix: just barely possible round the water heater in the laundry next door or even outside in a purpose built enclosure, but both are enormous engineering challenges 2) a switchback up and down the wall: workable but tedious to use manually and a beggar to automate 3) a train elevator, which is where my thinking has ended up. I found this http://www.ospreyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/kmr/projects/trainlift-01.htm(I loved the "After several minutes of careful planning and design").They built a lift modelled on car scissor-jacks. I thought: why copy a jack? Why not just use two matched jacks coupled by a shaft? A couple of cheapie jacks from Repco (a local tra***ools-barn) should do it. I'm thinking that buying the jacks will be quicker and easier. And given prices these days, cheaper. Building from scratch, making the pivoting axles with a threaded centre for the rod is a bit of work. If I use jacks, I'll just join the two existing threaded rods together. There is a coupling on one end for the jack handle, and hopefully a bit of rod at the other end, so i'm thinking a length of square tube, or round tube squared off, will hopefully be all I need to join them together.I also like their docking/alignment mechanism top and bottom, simple and effective. And I like the use of a battery powered drill, given they are about $40 at *** Smith (a local trash-electrical-barn) these days. It may be able to be used as a stall motor or it may need to have a contact switch cutoff at the limits of travel.Or I may have to use a dedicated stall motor instead of a hacked drill.So I've embarked on a proof-of-concept. If successful it opens up all sorts of possibilties. I wouldn't want the lift in the middle of a journey but with staging on one deck and layout on the other I think it will be excellent.I fell at the first hurdle though: the cheapie jacks at Repco or Warehouse have 10" travel. I need 12-15" to get a useful clearance between decks. I could still make it work with an inch or two of ramp each end of the lift, but I wanted bigger jacks. Luckily after hunting I found a 12" travel jack at KMart ( a worldwide trash-everything-barn).First testing last night. Needed a little modification to get access to the central threaded rod from both sides so I can string them together: hard work for the Proxxon hacking away at a 750kg jack!! (Was too tight to get my angle grinder in there).Smooth enough driven by a power drill (I think, didn't actually have rolling stock on it yet). One issue is going to be the variation in vertical speed between the bottom and top of the travel. I think it will be OK, just a bit slow at the top end.Another issue will be the motor. I'd like to use a battery drill - nice high torque for low cost. But I'd also like to use a stall motor, to maintain alignment pressure at each end of travel. Otherwise I'll have to rig cutoff switches (I want to put a train on the lift then go off to do something else and leave it unattended as it raises or lowers). Any ideas on a 30-60 rpm stall motor with a bit of torque?
I have in the planning using the Walthers Carfloat (which I have) and have 2 docks. I will load it up with cars and physically carry it to the other dock. This may be an oportunity to be a klutz and dump the whole lot, but oh well.
If you havent figgered the mounting method, maybe find a salvage house or maybe an artist store has this, drawer slides and mount it vertically and mount your elevator on it, and physically lift it in place with locks.
Motorizing would be cool there might be some device around to do that.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
A car window winder as you call it has a pretty tight tolerance track to keep the window straight. As far as travel if it was attached to the end of a lift arm with a pivot off center at a fulcrum it could easily double or triple the window travel.
Good thoughts. Any object as long as a train lift that moves sideways tends to have a lot of friction from binding: it needs to be very tightly engineered to keep it level as it moves. trust me, three years of experience says this isn't as easy as it looks. The key is a rigid back-plane, nicely aligned tight runners, and a counterbalance to make up as easy as down. Then the linear force can come from all sorts of sources, including driving the counterbalance pulleys, a rotating threaded rod (but make sure you get the kind of thread designed for linear force), a belt-drive (which is what my mechanism is at heart)... See links earlier in this thread for other ideas that have worked, including a great big plywood wheel with a crank!
Car window winders may not have enough linear travel to give a good separation between decks. My next option if this one failed was a 4WD car jack - big linear threaded-rod type.
Well I'm back and it only took two years
After extensive engineering and tinkering, the car-jack lift is a pile of metal in my workshop, and the all-new TranzDeck III emerges.
The picture makes more sense if you know that
It will be another month before I lay track and run trains on and off it, but I'm at the last engineering challenges. it runs smoothly and (so far) reliably up and down without derailing rolling stock.
Track power is delivered to the deck, and turns off if the deck is moving. Power to the deck approaches is turned off if the deck is not there. (the lightbulbs you see dangling are attached to the track power connectors to show track power on-off for testing).
the deck won't move if anything is detected in the doorway to the deck (IRDOT detectors from MicroMark).
Mechanical barriers descend when the deck is not there to stop someone shunting into space.
Now I need to engineer the following:
- track alignment at the edge of the deck
- PC video camera to stop trains in the right spot, and IRDOT indicator
- enhanced control panel with better indicators of detect status (all designed)
- remote automatic control instead of local manual (just requires two more relays)
The frame is a vertical sheet of 12mm pine plywood stiffened on the front with 20mm x 200mm pine boards and on the back with cheap batten strips (about 20mm by 50mmm) with a coat of primer. The drive is part of an old ATM machine that used to raise the protective sheet of glass from the screen/keyboard (remember those?). It is built for 20V DC. I run it on 12V at about 3A.
The runners are like oversized kitchen drawer slides, also ex-ATM. Find your local ATM wrecker.
The lift deck is attached to an odd-shaped vertical plywood carrier attached to the drawer runners which are attached to the larger ply panel. The deck-carrier is counter-balanced on lawn-mower-starter-cord (low stretch) through marine pulleys to an old window sash weight from the local scrap metal dealer, sawed to the right weight/length (hiding off to the right of picture)
Control is by a single heavy-duty DPDT centre off switch. power then has to find its way thru a perf-board full of relays that provide the safety interlocks on both lift motor power and track power.
Sorry to anyone who may have followed me down the car-jack path: I just couldn't get the motor drive tight and steady enough. I hope you enjoy TranzDeck III - I'll report back as I get it finally working!
QUOTE: Originally posted by robengland - some way to move one pivot on each jack back and forward on the rod, ie to lock into the thread: simplest fix will be two wing-nuts connected together. If that doesn't work I will need to weld (or epoxy???) something
QUOTE: Originally posted by robengland It did cross my mind to try to find an identical threaded rod and run one rod all the way thru both, but as ytou say it is a sp[ecialised thread. I forget all the theory of threads but I think it is square cut not helical and who knows if the pitch is a standard one....
QUOTE: Originally posted by robengland These cheap jacks are not made to be disassembled. If I were to make something longer I'd go with the Waldovia approach and make one from scratch
QUOTE: Originally posted by robengland ndbprr, right now the wood is wide enough to take two tracks beside each other. Still pondering whether to do that. Getting two parallel tracks aligned nicely top and bottom will be hard enough.