Has anyone ever tried the on board locomotive camera that is offered by Walthers and if so how well does it work?
never tried it but i have seen model layouts with them they seem to work very well except on this layout it semmed to go fuzzy when it went in tunnels because the antenna couldnt transmit well under the tunnel but other then that it was rather clear
I’m not familiar with that one. I’ve got one that I bought from these guys:
I have fun with mine. I mounted it in the front of a dummy subway car. With the train down in the subway tunnels, I really don’t get the kind of light the camera needs for good performance. I took it up to my LHS and we ran it around the store layout a couple of weeks ago. In the bright lighting there the pictures were really very good.
The typical user of these will power it from a 9-volt battery. I bought the DCC-compatable power supply with mine, so that I could permanently mount it inside the car, replace the cover and not have to take it apart. A battery will run a few hours. As delivered, there is no switch in the line, so you need to open up the shell again to unplug the battery when you’re done. The power supply, by the way, is about the same size as a 9-volt battery.
Today’s HO locomotives are pretty stuffed with motors, gears and weights. You might get the camera into an operating engine, but you’d never get the power supply or battery in, so I would recommend a dummy engine. In my subway car installation, I immediately noticed that the camera began to overheat once I put the shell back on, so I had to remove some window glazing and disconnect the interior light at the front end of the car. These small CCD devices are very heat-sensitive, so be sure that the system has plenty of ventilation.
This is a short “tunnel vision” video I did with my camera. This was preliminary, and was actually taken with the camera in a gondola powered by a battery. The lighting was very poor, so you should judge the picture more from the above-ground shots.
I bought one of the mini cams advertised in MR, and mounted it in a box car. I made a movie of my layouts switching operation on VCR tape. I have also used cam by itself sitting at a scale 6 feet off the layout surface, it works great! Even at our club the cam will go through tunnels giving a end of caboose ride view. Its also great for inspecting the tackwork.
I’ve also added a micro switch on a small sheet of styrene placed inside the box car door. The door can be slid shut or opened, The switch is connected to the battery side of the power cable.
Nearly all of these camera systems transmit in the 900Mhz range at extremely low power output, so their range is limited and they are prone to electrical interference. On a large layout you will need to relocate the receiving antenna as your train goes around the layout to avoid reception dropouts.
On a large HO-scale layout near Tombstone, Arizona, in a friend’s barn, the picture frequently drops out because of tunnels and other obstructions, so the receivng antenna must continually be moved around.
We have one at our club and while it is CUTE to see it running around the layout, it sure finds the un sceniced portions of the layout and the bad looking track and the undetailed sides of the buildings and the big humans as it swings around the way to tight curves and quits transmitting in tunnels and finds all of the areas of the layout that are not lighted properly and how jerky the operators are and other than that it is CUTE!
BOB H – Clarion, PA
Haven’t had a drop out problem with my cam, but it only has to transmit 20 feet. Keeping the receiver antenna at the same level as the layout is also important.
I would like to put another cam in a locomotive looking out the engineers window using a prism to split the image on the TV. This way engineers view is in both directions as switching work is being done. The model engineer would operate the engine and would only be using the TV monitor to view, while a train crew member at the layout will give signals over radio. The engineer could be in a different room. Just another one of my many plans for working on the layout.