Recently, I was reading the Febuary 2006 issue of Model Railroader that contains the article “American Dream in Germany”. I was reading through it and saw where they had HO Scale autos running around the layout by using a wire in the road, a magnet in the car, and a little drive system that makes the car move. I thought, “Man, that would be cool on my layout!”. The problem is, I don’t know where I could possibly find the little drive system in the car itself. Can anyone Help? Thanks.
-Brandon
Do a Google search for "Faller Car System.:
http://www.eurorailhobbies.com/default.asp
Look under the Faller line. This whole shop is pretty good. That car system ain’t very cheap.
Thanks. I checked out that website you suggested and you were right… they weren’t cheap! It gave me some ideas, though. Thanks again.
-Brandon
Back in the 1970s I saw a JC Penney catalog that showed a combination trainset/slot car race set. I never saw this again. It probably fell victim to political correctness when somebody complained it was teaching kiddies to try and beat a moving train. That sort of thing wouldn’t appeal to me now but when I was a kid, I would have thought “Way cool!!!”.
here is the world´s largest layout that uses this car system and has several hundred of these cars running… you can even do a roll on roll off system with flat cars fully automatic… or cars stop at a train crossing automatic when a train comes… or busses pull up to a stop and start again with their falshing lights flashing… or cars pull up to a gas station with the flashing lights on and upon braking the brake lights on… and so on… it is a complete system …
here some english info…
http://www.miniatur-wunderland.de/data/cms/en/240/
cheers max
I still have one of those Aurora Model Motoring sets with the railroad crossing. I believe Tyco made one, too, since they sold trains and slot cars at that time.
However, I think they fell to market choices trather than pressure from parents. The slot cars ran faster than the trains and quickly became more popular with the kids. There were many articles in the model press lamenting the loss of potential model railroaders to the slot car trend.
From the miniatur-wunderland site, it appears some of the vehicles are powered as are slot cars, though the connections seem much smaller. If one were selective on a certain section of roadway to power, I don’t see this a a huge problem…
This is probably one of the final frontiers for MRers. How to animate automobile traffic realistically. Right now, all of our autos are either parked or waiting at a traffic light/stop sign. Not very prototypical. Right now it seems like a daunting task but with the miniaturization of electrical components, I would not bet against it being a viable option sometime in the future. Then we will get into the old argument. Should our auto traffic be continuous run or point-to-point.
They do not use a slot system, it is in fact a wire buried in the roadway with tiny magnets in the cars to track the wire and is computer controlled. Each car has a decoder (similar to DCC), battery and charger built in.