HO Freight Car truck with Electrical Pickups?

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Is there any manufacturer that makes HO Freight Car truck with Electrical Pickups?

Planning on switching to DCC and would like to be able to track cars on the
layout with a computer using Bi-Directional or Transponding.

John

2

I’ve seen replacement wheelsets with resistors wired to them for detection circuits, but never a freight truck with electrical contacts on it. I had to fabricate my own for a caboose so I could have track-powered marker lights, by taking the contact wipers off of a trashed passenger car that had interior lighting.

3

Try the Jay-Bee line of wheels. I assume that what you need are not new trucks but wheels that have electrical contact between them, presumably with resistance paint. I think Jay-Bee makes such wheels.
Dave Nelson

4

No, he will need actual pickups if he wants to have every car transpond. Resistance wheels will only let you know a car is there, it won’t tell you WHICH car.

There are several makers of pickup wipers which, if you have metal wheels and plastic trucks, should be fairly easy to make up. The concept is pretty neat, being able to tell that car ABC 1234 has been spotted at Acme Industries, but to equip every car with pickups and transponding decoders - yikes! Would make for some neat automated operations though. Might be neat for the internal operations of say a steel mill, just the hot metal cars and so forth transponder equipped and the plant switcher automatically moves cars around periodically.

–Randy

5

Randy,

Which makers of pickup wipers are their?

I currently only have about 15 cars so adding them as I go souldn’t be a issue. I’ve been slowly adding metal wheels to all my cars. Also planning on DCC and computer CTC once my current layout is complete.

John

6

Dave Nelson/cacole,

If I decide not to do transponding I’ll probably go with the resistive wheel sets.
Which company’s make resistive wheel sets or do I need to add the resistive paint myself.

John

7

Tomar is one I know of. Check Walthers, there’s bound to be more, but I don’t have a catalog here with me.

I don’t know of any that just clip on, like a 5 minute job type of thing. Tomar, for example, makes all sorts of pickups and wipers, but it’s up to you to figure out how to mount them on the trucks and not interfere with the movement, and runnign the wires inside the car body.

–Randy

8

Randy,

Thanks, I took a look on Walthers and Tomar websites. Now i’ll have to find the best method to mount them,

John