And one of my frequently used quips… “Eat the meat, spit out the bone.”
Sometimes I hear “facts” about past historical events, railroad operations and, yes, electronic developments and circuits and if I see something that I find interesting enough I’ll go digging on my own and the end result is that I come away with a better understanding about how a problem was solved or a technological hurdle was overcome. If I’m skeptical and find some, or all, of the information slightly less than palatable, I “spit it out.”
I have read the biographies on Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and many of the railroad “empire builders” and admire the determination that these men had in attempting to make ours a better world.
So, like Randy, I find it very satisfying to read about how things were done back-in- the-day. I hope others don’t get discouraged and hesitate to post neat little “historic” tidbits like this.
I always remind people that what’s new is old. Someone mentioned Amtrak’s new Head End Power (adopted around 1978 or so) and I pointed out that I have patent drawings from 1887 showing a steam powered dynamo mounted in the baggage car and a system of wiring throughout the train for lighting.
Thanks for your comments Ed. I’ve been thinking of doing that, at least intermittently, maybe more extensively now that the All-Access Pass makes the MR archive widely available.
I’ve been doing some piecemeal reading in the archives and will spit out what I think is still worth chewing over, sorta like a mother bird…[xx(]
Well, I’ll try not to make it nasty.[#oops] I do hope everyone treats each other gently in discussion, as we all have something of value to contribute and none of us are experts in everything, even when it’s possible to largely agree on certain facts.
It also will help to at least glance over the article, if you do have some access, so that at least we’re all on the same page as best possible, so to speak. Finances don’t permit my doing All-Access right now and my MR collection is pretty well complete back to the early 50s, or I’d post whatever links they use as a reference in addition to the purely paper reference. I try to hit the high points, but obviously don’t try to hit everything of relevance and worth discussing since it is a summary I’ll try to offer as a starting point when I do turn up a nugget.
BTW, in a mostly unrelated topic, this particular MR edition also includes a thorough article on building turnouts.[:)]
I hope nobody came away from reading my posts with the opinion I am against anything being brought up from the past. I enjoy these types of discussions and like to reminisce and see how things were done back in the day. I especially like to look at the prices of things and see how much stuff used to be available.
As far as what I know, I think I have expounded at times about how little I know and the older I get, I realize I actually do know very little!
Yep, that’s the spirit. Wisdom is as much knowing your limits as knowing what you actually know inside those limits. The nice thing about discussing old MR stuff is that we actually have a pretty good set of what is known available. That’s a good starting place for having fun with the past.
Wireless radio throttles - I still use the Aristo Craft 10 Channel Train Engineer throttles - 27MHz
And I make my own 5" “rubber ducky” antennas, and they work very well providing range of about 150’ to 175’.
With the long telescoping antenna Aristo provided the range is a little more, closer to 250’ or 275’.
Aristo offered a rubber ducky for a while, but it was 8" and floppy, not really good for an indoor layout any more than the long one.
It may be “old” tech, but they work great and and provide great speed control. The output is constant voltage pluse width modulated, just like the motor control out put of DCC decoders.
With conventional DC locos it provides perfect constant brightness lighting, which comes on before the loco moves, and very smooth speed control.
Simple, easy to use, reliable and rugged.
While much updated and now 2.4 GHz, Crest, which is/was the same folks as Aristo, still makes a great radio throttle for onboard in larger scales and trackside in smaller scales.
And they are developing HO size onboard receivers, which they had also offered for the older system.
Yes, some good ideas don’t go away, they get better. My Crest radio throttle worked well, but I ended up selling it because my needs changed. A very happy fellow in Canada was happy to give it a new home. I bought it originally to be an alternate cab, subbing for one of my two MRC CM20s on occassion. Then I decided it was time to changeover to DCC. Thought to use it outside at some point, but I just didn’t want the hassle of sending power through the rails for that any longer. My goal is to run deadrail battery power via RC in my Bachmann Shay and take the whole thing outdoors, so the Crest really didn’t fit and I needed the money for other layout priorities. The Crest held it’s value very well, too[swg]
I will be keeping my eye on what Crest and others offer in terms of radio decoders, as there seem to be several brands of those hitting the market and I only need 1. That, a few bits and pieces and some LiPo batteries and I think I can be in business.
Radio control is an excellent method for several types of DC layouts, indoors and out, and still provides robust performance if you just need to run a train .
Mike, for some reason the onboard portion “Brains” of a radio control system are called “Receiver” and what we install in our DCC locomotives is called a “Decoder”. Essentially they do the exact same thing and why there is a distinction, I have no clue.
I’m not correcting you, only pointing out a conundrum! I’m sure someone can give us a boring definition of why this is, I will be holding bated breath!
On-board radio are ‘receivers’ because they are receiving a radio signal. DCC is not RF, the ‘decoder’ is decoding a binary stream of data sent over the rails.
Yeah, the terminology here can get a bit confusing, with the overlap in concepts that model railroading often undertakes. My take on it, clumsy as it seems, is to assume that what’s in the loco does considerably more than just receive the signal. The receiver aspect of it would be just one small part of the bigger whole, which is oriented toward RR operation. It’s a distinction that can get lost in the shuffle, but so long as we all know what we’re talking about, we should be able to understand how the concept is being used in context.