Im trying to find an ho scale Northstar train but I can't find one. Does anyone know of any?

Hello. I am super duper new to this. I have been trying to follow this video from the dccwiki for wiring a double crossover. Their's looks very different from mine. I am going to be building my HO track double crossovers with 2x Atlas code 100 #6 turnout right #394, 2x Atlas code 100 #6 turnout left #393, and one Atlas code 100 19 degree crossing #171. I don't own the track yet, but I want to have every detail planned out before I buy anything.

I don't know what a dcc reversing module is/does or why I would need one? I did my best labeling what I thought each section should be energized with (+/-). I have also included a blank and a copy of my layout.

I have also circled a section in green which I am unable to make out what goes on in there or how it's wired. I know that it has something to do with frogs. Is that maybe what needs to have a reversing module? Let say I do end up needing this reversing module thing. what is that and how to I control it? My goal is to run 1 or 2 trains on this track. I want to be able to have 1 train on the outer loop and 1 on the inner loop. However, sometimes if I am running 1 train, I may want to have it go in a figure 8 either direction across both loops. how does that factoring this? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

My son is an avid collector of steam Hornby’s and he’s got three favourites, Maude, No 19 and Andrew Barclay number 6.

We have the 1st two for him but we are struggling got the No:6

Can anyone point us in the right direction to find this? Second hand or brand new.

Here is my n-scale yard design for my upcoming build. Details:

• The length of this image is about 9 feet
• The total layout is a 6' by 14" horseshoe
• Peco 55 track
• The bottom two lines are main lines
• Next two are receiving and departure
• Next 4 are classification
• The top part I'm not married to the design, but it would be reserved for engine shed, maintenance, caboose line, etc. I have about another foot to 18 inches of space above that area.

I plan to run 20 car trains and the receiving/departure is big enough to get them in and out. I am trying to create an engine escape from both sides. When running trains I'm a sit and stare type of hobbyist so my actual operations will be minimal, albeit not 0%.

Hello Reddit

I am now a proud owner of this wonderful Märklin locomotive , this one is in its Original paint coat and runs like a Antilope :)))

Yesterday my personal assistant brought me the locomotive she bought me off eBay a few weeks ago: and absolutely gorgeous Tyco 2-8-0 consolidation. The old girl briefly ran on my layout under its own power before time fully caught up to her. I was so hopeful because when I put her on the track, she responded to power: the headlight turned on and the motor buzzed. She even jerked forward a little. With a bit of prodding, I got one and a half laps out of her before the motor fully seized up. When I took off the tender shell to manually turn over the gears/motor, it was difficult, which was a bad sign. I disconnected the locomotive from her original tender, gave her this spare oil tender, and I just finished painting the smokebox, firebox, and the running boards silver. Enjoy this old gal as much as I love her

Im thinking on a layout and ive sen some ideas i like but wondering what peoples layout look like before and after changes you've made.

Cab car is ESU, the two regular cars were exclusively offered in Switzerland by Piko, the locomotive (4/4) is from Roco. The cab car came with lighting inside, I might add that to the rest of the train.

The other night I stumbled across the LCC spec, maybe I'm late to the party but I'm seeing more and more devices coming out that support it. For those who haven't yet, TL;DR it stands for Layout Command Control and it specifies a new protocol specifically for accessories to talk to each other - think throttles, switches, lights, anything that isn't on the track itself basically. For the most part, they do bidirectional communication through a standard CAN bus at 125kbps.

It's specifically not designed to replace DCC, which carries both power and data through the rails. DCC is one-directional for the most part (controller to decoder). Various open and proprietary solutions have come and gone over the years to try and bolt on that missing second direction, so trains could communicate and build more advanced occupancy systems etc. But they're mostly limited by the very design of DCC, which only really allows one side to talk.

LCC has none of those restrictions; it's designed to be fully bidirectional. If it could be applied to a locomotive's decoder, it could allow a number of cool features:

• Full block and occupancy control, knowing exactly which locos/cars etc are in any given block
• Reporting from the train, knowing the actual speed, if it's stalled, any issues etc
• Much more advanced programming, the decoder can talk back and tell you what it is and what it does
• Full, safe firmware upgrade support over the rails. The concept of a programming track goes away completely
• The much higher bandwidth (compared to DCC) could enable more advanced things like sending sounds on demand. Maybe a low res camera if you push it?

LCC specifically avoids being a replacement to DCC, but that got me thinking: why not? LCC already has the full concept of train control, but it's intended for DCC boosters and other things to represent the trains to other LCC devices, as a bridge.

There's probably some motivations for this separation outside of the purely technical reasons (standards adoption is one) but I'm a techy guy, so I just want to focus purely on the technical aspect. The question I asked myself: is it possible?

So naturally I spent almost 2 days feverishly researching, and I'll share just the basics. Plenty more to figure out, this is all theoretical.

Problem 1: Can CAN work over power?

There's various devices on the market that are able to inject a data signal into a standard power outlet at much higher data rates than LCC, so it must be possible. The idea is to apply 15V DC to the rails, and then essentially overlay the CAN bus signal on it. With the right circuitry on each end, an injector and a decoder could separate the high frequency CAN signal from the DC power, and then use standard CAN transceivers to communicate.

On the electrical side, we basically use inductors and capacitors to form a high and low pass filter to both combine and separate the two from each other. These components are not small. Based on the components I specced, it's taller than most decoder specs allow, and I think it'll only fit in HO scale and above. This is the advantage DCC has - it only requires a few diodes, and these can be tiny.

Problem 2: How do we keep the trains running?

The injector would need to be smart. While we could just straight up inject the CAN bus into the rails, dirty tracks and small disconnects will cause a lot of errors on the bus. CAN handles this through retransmission and retries, but it will pollute the network a lot. This is solved through a simple forwarder, that is responsible for taking messages in from the backbone, and creating its own bus for the track. Additionally, because we have bidirectional communication, an injector will always know exactly which trains are on its section, so it only has to forward messages for that section.

This in theory could lead to a MUCH higher volume of trains that could be handled on one bus. 1) because LCC only transmits train control messages when something has changed while DCC sends them over and over, and 2) because each block only has to send messages for the train within it. And 3) much higher bandwidth, of course.

Problem 3: What happens when a train crosses from one block to another?

As they're both running the same DC power, from the power side, nothing! This is already a nice advantage over DCC, where the boosters need to be kept in sync to prevent shorts. On the data side, what happens is that the two CAN buses are temporarily joined together, and both injectors see the train at the same time. This will lead to duplicate messages being forwarded. The decoder can handle duplicate messages, it just drops one. But message collisions could happen. Each injector needs to add a tiny random delay to their forwarding, which should prevent this. They also need to not forward messages that have already been forwarded to prevent loops.

You'd need an injector for every block, which might get expensive. It's all using "off-the-shelf" components though, nothing fancy. Depends how prototypical you want to get, and therefore how big your blocks are.

Plus, reversing loops become super simple. Reverse the polarity, and the data reverses with it. Which brings me to...

Problem 4: What happens when I put a train on the track the other way around?

CAN buses expect a certain polarity to the signal. If you turn the train around and have it see the rails the other way around, then communication doesn't work.

This one's fairly simple, just needs a few components. We handle power the same way as AC power with a bridge rectifier. For the filtered CAN bus, the MCU can detect the track polarity, and flip the signal if needed. It needs a few components on the board for this which I won't get into.

Problem 5: What happens if a train loses power very briefly on the track?

The LCC standard is very explicit that when a node starts up, it should reinitialize and go through the whole song and dance of announcing itself to the network. It's fairly common for a loco to encounter some dirty track, temporarily lose power and have its own momentum carry it through.

In this process, the microcontroller loses power and forgets what it's doing. DCC handles this by just sending the same commands over and over, so it can just be read and get going. LCC only sends messages when something changes.

So we need to bend/extend the spec slightly here. We add a new signal sent out by the decoder every 200ms that acts as a transponder. The injector can use this to understand what is occupying its block (full occupancy capabilities, yay!) and also that same transponder signal contains all the information about what the decoder is doing right now. It stores its own alias address and controller ID in flash as these change rarely.

The injector stores this information. If the decoder loses power, on startup, it asks the injector "Hey! What was I doing again?" and the injector responds, but only if it saw the decoder within the last second or so. If the decoder gets its state back, it doesn't go through the initialization song and dance, and as far as the rest of the network cares, it never went away.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my essay. I'm hoping for people to poke holes in my idea, because I'm sure that this was thought about and discussed a lot when the LCC spec was being made. Do you think it's technically viable, and if it existed, would you buy it?

Hi all, I've been binge watching a WHOLE lot of model videos of all scales, and it got me inspired to put some of my favorite parts in my own layout!

Then it got me curious to know what are other people's favorite parts of layout videos?

I specifically like mountain scenes and bridge scenes, but I've also come across some videos of trains "running through fields" and I like those a lot too!

I'm curious to what you all have to say!!

I bought a box containing a variety of model train things, and these fuses were there.

More than likely, they are obsolete and of no use to anybody, but in case they are useful to anybody, I will be happy to put them in the mail to you.

(Note to mods: I am offering these for free so this is not a selling pitch or anything.)

NOTE: these have been spoken for and are no longer available

Specifically the new Black Beetle and Pioneer Zephyr. I remember several years ago some models were listed with DCC sound by ESU. But I can't confirm that for there newer items and I even checked a fre of their older items that didn't have it listed.

Layout planning, figuring out what I would just sit and watch...

I recently saw on trainshow.net that there is an upcoming "Toy Train Show" in my area, hosted by the Train Collector's Association. Forgive my ignorance, but is "toy train" synonymous with "model trains" in this context? In perusing the website, TCA seems to be about model trains, but in terms of this show, the website is light on details. I got excited at the prospect of going but the use of "toy train" has thrown me off. I personally have no feelings either way with the term, but I know many modelers are sensitive to it and am surprised that the phrase would be used in official events if it's just a typical model train show. So it makes me wonder if this is something different and it is actually an exhibit for toys? I don't want to show up if it's all Brio and Thomas (no disrespect, just not my interest). Anyone have insight into TCA toy train shows? TIA.

N scale code 80. The Alco is temperamental on the points, but the EMD is a smooth ride no matter what. Got the mountain at a store, they hade like 10 of them! Brand new old stock too, will work well with my permanent layout plan.

Hello all!

Due to some life events I need to scrap my current layout and restart with alot less space. I learnt alot from my first, sad to see it go, but excited to start something new! As the title says its a 4 foot T-Trak layout that fits on a shelf. Planned around a papermill with complex movements in mind. I also want to expand the layout without restarting once i get more space, why T-Trak seems like a good choice.

Upper switch back is also for a possible expansion, either for another industry or yard further down the line alot of time to decide.

Would love some advice!! Much thanks!

Enjoy I guess

Insert jaws reference here...

I have a small train board that is 4' x 6' in HO. Since I live in he mountains I am planning on putting in a small ski hill in one corner of the board that the trains would under. Any recommendations for a ski lift? it would be really cool if it did work, but it can just be stationary. maybe HO scale is too big since I want this to be rather small?

Hello everyone, thank you for your interest in the previous post,

I am currently working on the carriage. As you can see in the video, it isn’t finished yet. I still need to 3D print the back and add lights to it. The interior is something I’m still planning. Right now, I am digitally recreating an interior as seen in the tv show as best as I can. One of the differences between the show and my model, is that in the show there should be one first class cabin in a carriage, whereas mine has space for two cabins. Since I took inspiration from online pictures of the sets they used in the show, I’m guessing that there are size differences between the sets they used and the actual 3D models of the train.

The carriage has one motor per bogie that is able to disconnect and reconnect to the wheels when necessary. The idea here is that the slower motors in the carriage can help push with the locomotive on startup until they can’t keep up anymore, then they have to disconnect from the wheels so the locomotive can pull everything with as little resistance as possible. Only recently I noticed that the motors don’t run anymore, probably because of a fault in the motor driver, I am currently trying to fix this.

I have also upgraded the design of the snowplow so it's a little more reliable. The front panels still don’t align perfectly and it still fails sometimes but it is way better then in the beginning, it also uses less servo’s. I included a demonstration at the end of the video. 

Another thing I discovered is that the axles of the locomotive break every once in a while. This is mostly caused by the fact that every axle consists of two parts that are connected in the middle. In the new design, I have added a sort of 3D printed sleeve that covers both of these halves to connect them more firmly and keep them from breaking.

One more thing I did was upgrade my existing track switch, it is now able to be switched by a button in the app instead of having to walk over to the switch and press the button manually.

The lego figure is there again for scale :)