Harry Truman once commented that anything new is the history yet unlearned. Here is a question about something possibly new founded on the miles of wiring, spending countless dolllars on professional electrical help, a computer, and a twelve cab DCC system…which I’m still not fully proficient with.
I understand that battery technology has advanced quite a bit and is being used for larger scales like G and F…and quite successfully. I can fully imagine HO track being laid, cleaning would then be minimal if at all, no feeders, no busses, no signal lines, no reverse loop magic, and basically just putting locos on track and controlling them with battery power. After charge is used, simply back loco on to a “recharging track” and in hours or overnight , ready for the next several hours of operation.
Young folks today are quite proficient with electronics and computers, but there are many who are not including old retreads such as myself. My Piermont Division layout is state of the art, but only because I signed checks. I understand much of it, but when serious problems occur…enter the "Geek Squad!
Being schooled in industrial design, I have always known about simplicity being the best and often most effective route. Here would be a challenge to a manufacturer…come up with such a system where only turnouts would have to be powered if desired…then of course any optional features such as signals, etc. They of course would not be intergrated into the basic system.
Or is this being done?? Thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
This has been discussed on here from time to time, and, there is some work being done.
The newest radio throttle from Aristo Craft provides all the control features of DCC but relies on direct radio contact to the locomotive. It can use onboard battery power or constant voltage track power like DCC.
Aristo is not saying if or how soon we might see HO sized recievers for this system, but it is rumored. They already have HO sized recievers for their older Train Engineer radio throttles.
That would leave only the battery developement to make this practical.
Using the new Aristo Train Enginer Revolution, I would say it could be done right now in O Gauge and someone out there may be doing it as we speak. As you know it is very common in G gauge.
Even direct radio with track power has some possible advantages of DCC. By taking the signal off the rails, the under layout infrastructure is reduced slightly and signal distortion issues from dirty track are elimnated. With an approperate power buffer in the loco, dirty track problems would be greatly reduced.
Reverse loops would still need to be delt with and signal detection may be made even simpler at that point.
Great as it may be, DCC could one day be replaced by battery powered direct radio. It was not all that long ago in this hobby when DCC was just a pipe dream.
A very similar discussion was posted here a couple of years ago. Since then, there has been little progress in battery technology that would allow a battery, sound decoder, and speaker to all be crammed into a small steam engine tender, and even less likelihood of them ever being put into diesel engines.
First, thanks for the quote from Harry, the Great Pragmatist. I suspect todays Washington would cause him to turn the air purple.
I think the current DCC system offers a good basic platform for development. One way or another, an operator must be able to communicate with the locomotive. Systems that rely on line of sight have inherent problems because of that. Radio communication with the loco is another possibility, since it avoids the problem of signal corruption due to dirty track.
Using microwave recharging technology to “drip charge” an onboard battery would be one way to make the system less dependent on dirty track because the high frequency signal of DCC is less fickle about contact than the DC current required by the loco’s engine. In addition, the binary nature of DCC protects it to some degree from loss of signal issues.
A fully developed digital system could use bus wiring, common connectors and coded packets of digital information to control any accesory that was plugged into the bus.
Here’s the rub. As it now stands, DCC has been through the NMRA process and has standards that apply to decoder/control interface. Even so, the standards to allow cross utilization of different manufacturers devices would have to be strengthened to the point where an “open architecture” type system existed. Without such an open system we run the risk of the Beta/VHS, BlueRay/HD, or DCC/DCS conflicts limiting hobbyists choices.
I guess in one way, model railroading is moving slowly towards a computer game with a 3-D display. Mechanical types like me (who favor DC railroading, manual switches and “old school” modeling) are going to face the choice of trending up or hunkering down as more and more of the hobby moves towards electronics. I find it noteworthy, and admirable, that a model railroader of your ability who has spent years in the ho
I had a discussion with an engineer who worked for one of the battery companies. We agreed that battery technology was ready for a big breakthrough, and it would affect a lot of things.
That was almost 40 years ago, and I’m still waiting. What we see instead is more efficient use of the same battery power - first cassette tapes, then CDs and now solid state memory with no moving parts other than the speakers.
Right now, the power required to operate an HO train is probably not consistent with the power available from a reasonably-sized battery. And, I don’t see that changing much in the near future. Besides, there’s no terribly great “burning platform” need to change. Track power actually works very well. While the maintenance is annoying, it’s at least very cheap. Compare that to the cost of replacing rechargeable batteries after a few hundred cycles, and track power looks like it will be around for a long time.
Well MR or actually I think it was RMC had an article in the seventies on a guy who set up an Athearn F7 A-B set to run on battery power. The fact that nothing ever really came of it suggests the need / desire for such a set-up isn’t that great. DCC wiring is much simpler than DC, and DCC operations are much simpler than DC. Unfortunately a lot of people think there’s a lot of “programming” involved and that you have to be a computer or electrical expert to run a DCC layout, where in fact it’s easier to use DCC than to set up all the blocks and toggle switches and such for DC operation.
Radio communication is more than a “possibility” it is out there in many scales from several sources and in several forms.
I still use DC but use radio wireless throttles. I can run my trains from 50’ OUTSIDE my train room, which is an 800 sq ft room above my garage, no signal issues.
You guys need to look at current model plane technology for modern battery and radio onboard power and control. Throw in a little cell phone magic and you’ve got it.Right now there are R/C model planes with less than a one foot span that have four function recivers. not to mention the R/C helicopter business. I’m not into experimenting with this kind of stuff, but Howard(I like your work,I bought your book) you should know someone who knows someone who can do this stuff.
It would indeed be nice to be free of dirty track etc. You’re still gonna need wiring for the signals and turnout control 'cause thats how the big boys do it. BILL
Several years ago I made the bold prediction that onboard power would be the next big thing in model railroading but that was based more on wishful thinking than any technical knowledge of mine. Seeing what has been done with lithium batterieas and how small they were, it just seemed to me like the natural progression. If it does happen, I don’t see it replacing DCC but integrating into it. The only difference is the power would be on board instead of through the track and the commands would be received via radio. I don’t know if or when it will happen but my gut instinct based on what I have seen if miniaturization in the electronics industry over the last 40 years that it will someday be a reality, although I might not be alive to see it.
Sheldon,I fully believe RC battery operation will be the next break through in model train operation…I believe the battery will be the fuel tank or ash pan of a steamer.
Model Railroading is such a small and specialized hobby; I don’t see any big break through coming in the near future. Technologically speaking, we are a conservative bunch - there are still a good number of us who are quite happy running non-DCC cab control!
With that said, there is not much of a financial reward for a manufacturer to spend the kind of R&D bucks necessary to come up with a real break through in battery technology. Any technological advancement the hobby gets will be fall out from advancements elsewhere in the economy.
I think, barring any revolutionary breakthrough in micro-battery technology, the next evolution we will see is powering the rails and placing radio receivers directly in the cabs of the locomotives. This would be a simple, and logical, step up from systems like Rail-Lynx which currently uses IR receivers in each loco and just uses the rails for power.
The point was my radio throttles are more than reliable, have enough range for any layout and are not effected by line of sight issues.
We may never see batteries in HO, or, many of us may not use it even if it shows up (I don’t use DCC), but it may well be the next new thing and may be perfect for some modelers needs.
While “battery power” per se might not yet be an option, if ever, there may still be viable alternatives on the horizon, even for HO scale, and even for diesels. Advances in two specific areas, capacitors-- namely so-called “super capacitors” (and “ultra capacitors”, and the whole spawn along this line), and miniature “fuel cells” may prove fruitful in providing sufficient power and in the right ways to make self-powered locomotives and (at least some) accessories a potential prospect.
Particularly the latter, the miniature fuel cells-- much of the current effort has been to size them such that they can fit and power small hand-held devices such as cell phones, smart phones, PDA’s and netbooks, and other similarly-sized items. The power draw of these various devices is in the same general ballpark of a locomotive-- at least an HO-scale loco-- and it should be noted that as the size (scale) increases, so too does the area available for power resources, so the problem diminishes as the scale increases.
Also when I say the power is in the same general ballpark, it should be noted that the power curve is probably not the same and it would remain to be seen whether small-scale power devices can handle short-period current demands drains that the trains are likely to demand, even assuming the fuel supply is sufficient and heat dissipation, etc. are not overly limiting factors.
But this is where “super-capacitors” and “ultra-capacitors” may be able to assist. These devices are in-general regular capacitors like any you’re familiar with, with the exception that they have the ability to store very la
DCC really only offers the “best of what’s generally available and deployed”, which is not really all that great. It doesn’t do too badly at sending information (commands and whatnot) to the locos and devices but is not as good at receiving information back from those devices-- and what “technologies” do exist in this area are really more “bastard” technologies built on top of a difficult framework rather than a well-designed implementation from the git-go. In other words, bi-directional (full-duplex) communications with locos and such is possible, but only just barely-- and that fact isn’t likely to change given the cost of the overall hardware (to the end-user) and the engineering costs associated with developing something better. Not only does it have to be designed, but it also has to be manufactured and deployed cheaply enough to overcome the natural reluctance of a current DCC user to scrap their present system, and all their installed decoders, for something new / better. The so-called bi-directional protocols associated with DCC will fall flat if there is ever a need for larger amounts of data traffic and especially if it is required to be transmitted faster. This is not a limitation of data transmission systems in-general, rather that of DCC as its been implemented and modded and revised over the years.
Microwave recharging technology could be conceivably applied I suppose, but the side-effects / issues are numerous plus the technology is inherently “lossy”, not really all
In my opinion there are several really good advantages (niceties) to such a system but a number of drawbacks and obstacles to its implementation.
Pros:
– More “realistic” operations in which fuel consumption (battery power), range and power-discharge rates must be considered. Leading to more realistic layouts with respect to managing those aspects.
– Less concern / emphasis on track-cleaning. Though truthfully I wonder how much of this aspect would truly vanish as long as the tracks are needed to “recharge” things, or communicate with them, and whatnot. As long as there is the need to send electricity through the tracks for one purpose or another, there will be a need to clean the track every so often.
Cons:
– Reduced “operational time” since the locos will need to recharge once-in-awhile. Not a factor or a hindrance obviously if this aspect is incorporated into the operational scheme of the layout. But probably a concern if the goals are more mundane such as rail-fanning or running around in circles.
– The size and shape of the various power elements. As implemented, in the OP’s original story, requiring two locos would probably not be practical, regardless of how typical it might be in a railroading situation.
– Overcoming existing in-place / deployed systems such as DCC. There is a significant cos
The hobby itself does have practical value. It keeps some of us off the streets at night and out of the bars. It also allows the better half to answer the “do you know where is your child, umm husband, is tonight”.
The ability to run the trains from 50 feet away, maybe not so practical. Now, on the other hand, if one happens to live 50 feet from the bar and can blow the horn so that the better half thinks you’re in the basement, that might be another story. Oh, that’s right, we’d need DCC for that, wouldn’t we.
I don’t know that I agree here. I am in this hobby because I like trains AND I like to build things - in this case models of trains and structures, but building the benchwork, laying track, wiring, scenery (both its sub structure and finished details) are all fun and challenging to me. Nothing there to be “endured”.
And, I do enjoy and am very interested in operation - that’s why signaling and CTC are considered necessary to me.
Those not intersted in building things themselves are more than welcome to get their check book out.
But I don’t see either view as an advantage or disadvantage to the hobby or its future.