I have just purchased a very slightly used Rapido Canadian Pacific Tweedsmuir Park dome/observation car. It is a beautiful model as expected and in perfect condition, but unfortunately this one didn’t come with any information nor does it have the magnetic wand. I checked Rapido’s site and they have an exploded PDF of the car but I couldn’t see any references to a manual. HOSeeker doesn’t have a Rapido section. So, before I get out my set of heavy duty pry bars, I have a few questions:
The seller said that “the wand is missing”. Is the wand the same one supplied with Rapido’s Easy Peasy Lighting System?
I managed to get the lights to come on using just a regular magnet but I can’t get them to turn off. What’s the trick?
How do I take the shell off to install passengers? I can see that the couplers have to be removed before the shell can be lifted off, but does the shell then just pop off after spreading the sides?
The car came with the CP red Pac Man livery. I want to backdate it to to the maroon paint scheme with gold lettering. I have the decals on order. Do I have to remove all of the red stripe or can I get away with just removing the CP Rail lettering and the Pac Man symbol? Rapido has several methods listed on its website for removing the lettering. Has anyone actually removed Rapido lettering, and if so, how did you do it?
I have several of the Rapido Budd passenger cars with the track powered lighting. I don’t recall that any of them used the wand. Track power on = lights on.
I would experiment with carefully placing the maroon letterboard band directly over the CP red stripe. Of course you’ll need the Beaver emblem, too or is it still on the Pac-Man cars?
I would lightly rub the lettering with some Testors ELO to remove that, first.
Are you getting tired of answering all of my questions yet?!? I hope not!
I put the car on the test track and there were no lights. After a minute or so I decided to try running a magnet over the roof, and the lights came on immediately. Specifically, the magnet was about 1 1/2" in front of the dome when the lights came on. Was that a coincidence perhaps? Is there a constant lighting circuit built in that took a while to charge up and it just happened to come on at the same time I was passing the magnet over the roof? I don’t think there is because the lights go off immediately when the power is removed. Maybe I have a poltergeist?!?
I should give Rapido a call.
Thanks for answering my question on how to get the shell off.
Well, 'ya got me curiouser and curiouser now. I’ll have to play around with it and see what happens.
Over the years there have been lots of changes to the Rapido passenger line from the original Super Continental cars to what Jason & Co. are producing presently.
I got to ride in one of the Park cars back in '74. They were stunning cars. A fellow I know owns Riding Mountain Park and he planned to run dinner trains with it but I think that idea got pushed to the back burner.
You should be able to download these from my Flickr album.
If it gives you trouble let me know and I can scan the sheet as a .pdf and email it to you.
I just went over every inch of the exterior of my Tremblant Park with the magic wand and the lights stayed on. The little people got pretty annoyed and one lady’s cheap jewelery stuck to the ceiling, but the lights stayed on.
Here’s what my first car looked like upon arrival from Markham [:'(]
Of course Rapido sent a replacement but they were out of Kootenay Park so I had to settle for Tremblant. No biggie. Odd thing was that there was absolutely no hint of damage on any of the outer packaging.
Read about the wreck of Fundy Park here, and lots of other neat details:
I had found the parts diagram on Rapido’s website but I didn’t see the instruction sheet there.
Anyhow, there is no mention of a magnetic wand anywhere, nor does one show in the parts diagram, so I’m guessing that the seller was thinking of a different car, perhaps one with the Easy Peasy lighting system installed. I’ll blame the delay in the start of the lighting in my car on dirty connections, or poltergeists works too! It’s just strange that the lights came on at the exact same time that I ran the magnet over the roof.
To be honest, I never thought that I would ever spend that sort of money on a piece of rolling stock, but now that I have I am happy that I did. The Tweedsmuir Park car cost me considerably more than the original list price but that is what happens when something is very hard to find. As far as I can tell our bank balance is still in the black so why worry?
That is some pretty nasty damage to the Kootenay Park shell! How do you do something like that other than by throwing it at a wall? I’m glad that Rapido stands behind their products.
I got to ride in one too but I can’t remember if it was a dome/observation car or just a dome car.
My mom and I travelled from Toronto to Vancouver and back on the Canadian in 1965. I was 11. I remember the dome cars quite well. We were riding in the dome through the Rockies one beautiful stary night when we saw a huge display of St Elmo’s Fire cascading down a ravine. It was like watching the Northern Lights up close!
I got a note from Jordan at Rapido. Park cars did come with a magnetic reed switch and a wand, but they didn’t specify if that applied to all versions. Unfortunately I may have messed up my reed switch by using too strong a magnet so that is why it won’t turn off again. Rapido doesn’t have any replacements. I have some latching reed switches but I’m not sure if I want to be bothered replacing the one in the car. I’m fine with the lights on. They are LEDs so I’m not worried about life expectancy.
Rapido offered to send me a free wand and the paperwork. I have a couple of wands from their Easy Peasy interior lighting sets, so if they are the same wand I don’t need another. The answer to why I didn’t bother to use their wand the first time is too embarrassing to print here![D)]
Yes, I tried every position possible plus moving the magnet parallel to the shell and moving it up and down. Nada. Then I dug out the Rapido Easy Peasy wand and tried it. Same result. I suspect that Rapido speaks from experience when they suggest that I have damaged the reed switch.
Oh well.[:(]
When I think about it, it might be worthwhile replacing the reed switch just to preserve the value of the car. The switches that I have aren’t bothered by the stronger magnets. Latching magnetic reed switches are pretty rare these days. I suspect that is why Rapido hasn’t restocked them. That plus the fact that they are old technology and fragile, as I have proven.
I bought a bunch of them quite a few years ago. My plan was to install them in the locos’ tenders (DC operation), so that if one stalled on one of the many grades on my layout, I could kill power to that loco, allowing another locomotive to show up from behind as a pusher, or for one to back down the grade, so that it could couple-on to the stalled engine. I could then re-active the power to the stalled loco, and the two engines could take the train up the hill.
I was concerned, though, that the current drawn through the reed switch would be too high, quickly frying the reed. I never got around to installing any of them, as the locos all would have had to be rewired.
It was easier to do tests with the individual locomotives to give them a tonnage rating, allowing me to assign enough power to each train to avoid the problem.
I suspect that you were right. I don’t think the reed switches are designed to handle a lot of power. You could have set up some sort of relay system, but ultimately your solution to measure the capabilities of each locomotive was much smarter, much simpler and much more prototypical.
Honestly, I’ve never messed with the reed switch/magic wand. Since I waved it all over yesterday with no effect I’ll have to surmise mine is non-functioning as well.
I have a source for spare switches since I bought up a bunch of those Easy Peacey lighting kits when a vendor was selling them for cheap but I’m simply going to jumper the switch so that it never opens the circuit. Glad they fail in the closed state*.
Now that Tremblant Park is open I can —
A: populate it with LPP
B: better disguise the floor mounted dome LEDs
C: try to stop the light leakage around the window gaskets and
D: improve the function of the marker lamps.
*Going back to the reed switch — come to think of it — I have a couple function-only decoders. I can put the interior lights, dome lights and marker lights on their own functions. No more magic wand [:D]
Okay, the plot thickens! Exhibit A is interesting because the reed switch on your model is located behind the dome. When I got all the lights to come on I was passing the magnet over the roof in front of the dome. Just now I tried passing the wand over the roof behind the dome and voila, the side marker lights and the drumhead light went off. The rest of the lights stayed on. The wand seems to have to be flipped over to reverse the switch position.
Is there another reed switch in front of the dome on your model Ed?
This is getting to me! I’m going to take the car apart to see what I can find. I have some people on order so I have to take it apart anyhow.
Okay, I have taken the shell off. It didn’t want to come off so I had to try multiple times but I finally found a way to get a bit of leverage on it by putting the rear coupler screw back in sans coupler box, and with the sides spread, the floor popped out when I pulled on the screw.
There is only one reed switch, and it only seems to control the side marker lights and the drumhead, at least on my model. Why the lights came on the first time that I passed the magnet over the roof in front of the dome is anybody’s guess. Like I said, poltergeists!
The good news is that I haven’t fried the reed switch. The bad news is that… there isn’t any bad news![swg][tup] I managed to get the car apart without destroying it and now I can add my people. I haven’t looked at the car in the dark so I didn’t realize that there might be light leakage around the window frames. I’ll wait to see how Ed cures that. The marker lights are a bit washed out in appearance but I think I will try using a wee dab of Tiyama clear red to make the colour more solid rather than messing with the LEDs. I’ll wait to see what Ed does in that regard too.
The typical little ones used in cars like these - you were right to be concerned about the current. You CAN get bigger reed switches that can handle more than 1 amp. Restricting the search to 1.5 amp and higher DC, there are 108 choices at Digi-Key - but only 1 that’s latching. The other problem is that latching reed switches are almost always normally open, completely opposite of what you would want.
I bought a sack full of latching reed switches off eBay about three years ago for about $2 each. They are 1 amp normally off and about 1”/25.4mm long by ⅛”/3.175mm diameter. I don’t solder to the leads, I use the connector from the round header strips so that the wires just plug in. Many years ago I had the glass break on several reed switches so I opted to not have a problem with the hard to find latching switches.
I use LIR2032 rechargeable coin cells for lighting power in my cabooses and shorty coaches. The typical load is 4ma so the battery will keep the lights on for about 40 minutes without track power. I trickle charge the battery from track power.
For heaver loads I use a reed switch to control a micro relay for switching.
Sure enough, I just checked again and the reed switch only controls the two SMD red LEDs for the markers and the tiny LED in the tailsign. I do not believe the reed switch is actually a “latching” type but the circuitry under the board flips on-off for each impulse from the switch.
