Throttles by Peter J Thorne

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have the 1974 edition of Peter Thorne’s Practical Electronics for Model Railroaders and I am busy building one of his transistor throttles. I see on the internet that he has three later editions with similar transitor throttles-does anyone know if the later articles are an update or the same as the original? Which would be the best edition to try to get?

2

The difficulty of building any electroncis design from that era is that many critical component parts are no longer produced. There are very few discrete transistors and the like still being produced. Parts substitution is the way to get from there to here, or coming across a stash of old parts. Many substitutions will work, but there are some that won’t.

Unless the updates include part numbers that are readily available today, the more modern versions don’t make much difference. If the updates do include part numbers that are available today, then the updates are far more desirable.

I built one of his simpler throttles in the late '70s to make a busted train set power pack usable, and was/am quite happy with it.

yours in making your own throttles

Fred W

3

Don’t know how far along you are in building your throttle, but you might want to check out www.awrr.com for DC throttle designs using “modern” electronic components. I built the Capacitance Discharge unit (for my Atlas switch machines) from this website and am very happy with it. I’m planning to build one of the turnout indicator circuits to go with it. I would build one of the throttles myself, except that I recently converted to DCC and don’t need them anymore [:D]

4

I would agree with fwright. If possible get the latetest you can but how good it will do you will depend on if the parts lists are updated as well. I had the first printing as well, but by 1980 when I wanted to build one of his more sophistocated throttles, some of the parts were no longer made. I did have the parts for the simplest throttles, so I built it instead. Sold it at a swap meet in 1988.

5

Thanks for the excellent advise to visit the www.awrr.com site. I have down loaded some good electronic circuits for transistor throttles and other useful model railroad circuits I shall construct.

6

Another good site for model RR electronics is http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/Basics/BasicIndex.html

I’ve got all of Thorne’s books, and the other ones have different circuits in them than his first book. But, as pointed out, these books are quite a few years old and many of the semiconductors are no longer available.