non insulated wheels for coaches

[cychan1228]

Hi, I was planning to fit interior lighting into my Bachmann coach. However, both sides of the wheels are insulated, which make it impossible to pick up power from the axle. Are there any wheelsets on the market that are insulated on one side only. The diametre of the wheels is 13mm.

Thanks

Chris

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Black Beetle, and I believe DCC Concepts do a suitable wheel with pickuos included.

 

Mike.

 

Mike.

[RFS]

Hornby replacement wheels but make sure it's the correct pack - R8234. See for example Pickup Wheels. They work fine with Bachmann coaches as I've used them to create resistor wheelsets.

 

In stock at Hattons.

Edited May 1, 2019 by RFS

[RedgateModels]

remember the days when Hornby did a kit that used plungers on the track that clipped to the bogies?

[RAF96]

X9606 Pullman wheels are live axle to one wheel, so can be used in opposing pairs to pickup from both rails.

[beejack]

An alternative may be to use conductive paint to link one of the wheels to the axle.  

[NIK]

On ‎01‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 14:35, cychan1228 said:

Hi, I was planning to fit interior lighting into my Bachmann coach. However, both sides of the wheels are insulated, which make it impossible to pick up power from the axle. Are there any wheelsets on the market that are insulated on one side only. The diametre of the wheels is 13mm.

Thanks

Chris

Hi Chris,

 

I don't know of any 13mm OO wheelsets but I've done the following in the past:

 

Take the wheelset with insulating bushes on both wheels.

 

Measure the thickness of the bush between axle and front of wheel.

 

Drill a hole in bush that thickness between axle and wheel.

 

Force in a brass rod just a little bit bigger (0.05mm bigger) into hole. Trim flush with wheel.

 

I found in tests a 0.5mm brass rod could take 5 amps continuous without taking the axle over 60 degrees C so it should be both safe and sufficiently conductive for coach lighting.

 

I have some wheelsets that are insulated on one side only but I don't have the box they came in so I can't say who made them (probably Hornby).

 

I think Bachmann 3rd Rail EMUs have axle pickups on all wheels of the trailing coaches - maybe that's needed to get reliable coach lighting?.

 

What's the Bachmann coach out of interest?.

 

Regards

 

Nick

 

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by NIK
extra info

[NIK]

Hi Chris,

 

Not sure this diameter wheel will suit you but:

 

These are 14.1mm one wheel live to axle wheelsets I've just noticed Peter's Spares are now making (they say they are one pair - so do they mean a pair of wheelsets as per the photo?):

 

https://www.petersspares.com/peters-spares-ps84-141mm-disc-coach-wheels-one-wheel-live-to-axle-x1-pair.ir

 

Regards

 

Nick

[RFS]

37 minutes ago, NIK said:

Hi Chris,

 

Not sure this diameter wheel will suit you but:

 

These are 14.1mm one wheel live to axle wheelsets I've just noticed Peter's Spares are now making (they say they are one pair - so do they mean a pair of wheelsets as per the photo?):

 

https://www.petersspares.com/peters-spares-ps84-141mm-disc-coach-wheels-one-wheel-live-to-axle-x1-pair.ir

 

Regards

 

Nick

 

Think the price is for a pair of axles - would be a bargain if for 4 axles though. Seems they are identical to the Hornby R8234 but minus the two holes in the wheel. 

[melmerby]

Some of the later Bachmann coaches (e.g. Birdcages) have a bogie designed for lighting with split axle live wheelsets and electrically linked axle boxes.

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by melmerby

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, NIK said:

Hi Chris,

 

I don't know of any 13mm OO wheelsets but I've done the following in the past:

 

Take the wheelset with insulating bushes on both wheels.

 

Measure the thickness of the bush between axle and front of wheel.

 

Drill a hole in bush that thickness between axle and wheel.

 

Force in a brass rod just a little bit bigger (0.05mm bigger) into hole. Trim flush with wheel.

 

Regards

 

Nick

 

 

IMHO What a faff!

A bit of silver based conductive paint over the insulating bush takes a fraction of the time and it's very low resistance.

[DCB]

25 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Some of the later Bachmann coaches (e.g. Birdcages) have a bogie designed for lighting with split axle live wheelsets and electrically linked axle boxes.

 

Some of the earlier Bachmann coaches had nice split axle wheelsets.

 

It should be possible to remove one wheel and its bush and put a piece of fine wire around the insulated bush before refitting to bridge the insulation.  I used to put fine wire between tyre and wheel and wheel and axle on Airfix Castle driving wheels to bridge the insulation when changing to Hornby tender drives which worked well and still works 30 years on.   My lighted set has Lima wheels with the pick up through top hat bushes and pin point axles, again it has worked for 20 plus years with no attention worth mentioning, although it does have substantial capacitors to stop flickering and 1 LED per compartment which works a lot better than the typical 5 random spaced LEDs per coach

 

[melmerby]

8 minutes ago, DavidCBroad said:

Some of the earlier Bachmann coaches had nice split axle wheelsets.

 

Which, unfortunately, are often quite wobbly compared to the new ones.

I have made several wagons that have those (ex Mainline) wheels sets resistive for train tracking on DCC, by putting a SMD resistor over the plastic bit and using silver conductive paint to complete the connection.

However some 50% seem to be wobbly so need new wheel sets

Edited May 5, 2019 by melmerby

[DCB]

15 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Which, unfortunately, are often quite wobbly compared to the new ones.

I have made several wagons that have those (ex Mainline) wheels sets resistive for train tracking on DCC, by putting a SMD resistor over the plastic bit and using silver conductive paint to complete the connection.

However some 50% seem to be wobbly so need new wheel sets

I don't have a single wobbly wheel among my Bachmann 14mm (?) split axle wheelsets.   I don't use any split axle 12mm wagon wheels but the ones in my scrap box look like mainline and they have Mazak rot.  The Mainline split axle loco bogie wheels are really nice, it's just that the plastic axles were rubbish.  Airfix / Mainline used plastic wheels which were very nasty and I replaced some on an Autocoach with Bachmann split axle wheels with phospher bronze wipers bearing down on the axles which works well considering only one bogie has pickups.

Great thing about Bachmann split axle wheels is they stay on my less than perfect track where Jackson etc don't unless you have compensated bogies and only my 60 year old Hornby Dublo coaches have that level of sophistication from an RTR product.

[NIK]

2 hours ago, RFS said:

 

Think the price is for a pair of axles - would be a bargain if for 4 axles though. Seems they are identical to the Hornby R8234 but minus the two holes in the wheel. 

Hi,

 

I think the R8234 have 4 holes according to various websites.

I didn't think the Peter's Spares own wheelsets were for four axles but it wasn't clear to me as they said they were wheels not wheelsets that a pair meant a pair fo wheelsets like the photo or a pair of wheels.

 

I didn't go for the conductive paint method as I was worried about reliability including what happens during a partial short circuit. I've seen when some of the Hornby locos/EMU power cars with thin wiring derail on DCC, the wiring smoked and in the case of a Hornby 66 the wiring burnt out. The current path is presumably through the wheels of the derailed bogie touching the opposite rail then through the pickups, wiring and pickups again to the wheels on the other rail on the other bogie. I had a Replica Railways chassis derail and a track on the chassis PCB connecting the two bogies pickups burnt out. The DCC track it derailed on passed the coin test. All these incidents were on 5 Amps current trip, I haven't seen any problems on a club layout since we fitted MERG District Cutouts set at 3 Amps. However conductive paint might not be very thick.

 

Regards

 

Nick

[RFS]

2 hours ago, NIK said:

Hi,

 

I think the R8234 have 4 holes according to various websites.

I didn't think the Peter's Spares own wheelsets were for four axles but it wasn't clear to me as they said they were wheels not wheelsets that a pair meant a pair fo wheelsets like the photo or a pair of wheels.

 

I didn't go for the conductive paint method as I was worried about reliability including what happens during a partial short circuit. I've seen when some of the Hornby locos/EMU power cars with thin wiring derail on DCC, the wiring smoked and in the case of a Hornby 66 the wiring burnt out. The current path is presumably through the wheels of the derailed bogie touching the opposite rail then through the pickups, wiring and pickups again to the wheels on the other rail on the other bogie. I had a Replica Railways chassis derail and a track on the chassis PCB connecting the two bogies pickups burnt out. The DCC track it derailed on passed the coin test. All these incidents were on 5 Amps current trip, I haven't seen any problems on a club layout since we fitted MERG District Cutouts set at 3 Amps. However conductive paint might not be very thick.

 

Regards

 

Nick

 

I think you're right about the 4 holes. I have some Hornby wheels on my desk to fit resistors to, but they have 2 holes and I suspect have come from Hornby Maunsell coaches. Seems strange to me that Hornby provide several different variants. Not easily noticeable when the coaches are trundling round the layout!

 

If your loco wiring burns out following a DCC short, it usually means your DCC Command Station or circuit breaker is not acting fast enough, and that is most likely caused by the wiring at the location of the short being too small. On my layout I use a Lenz 5-amp power station with no circuit breaker and have never had wiring burning out following a short. I use a 2.5mm solid copper wires for the bus, plus a dropper on every piece of track. 

 

 

Edited May 5, 2019 by RFS

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, RFS said:

 

If your loco wiring burns out following a DCC short, it usually means your DCC Command Station or circuit breaker is not acting fast enough, and that is most likely caused by the wiring at the location of the short being too small. On my layout I use a Lenz 5-amp power station with no circuit breaker and have never had wiring burning out following a short. I use a 2.5mm solid copper wires for the bus, plus a dropper on every piece of track. 

 

 

Same here, although when I was powering the locos from the Lenz I had the point motors fed directly and the track via a separate 4A breaker.

If I got a short I could still operate the point motors, before I cleared the short.

[NIK]

2 hours ago, RFS said:

 

I think you're right about the 4 holes. I have some Hornby wheels on my desk to fit resistors to, but they have 2 holes and I suspect have come from Hornby Maunsell coaches. Seems strange to me that Hornby provide several different variants. Not easily noticeable when the coaches are trundling round the layout!

 

If your loco wiring burns out following a DCC short, it usually means your DCC Command Station or circuit breaker is not acting fast enough, and that is most likely caused by the wiring at the location of the short being too small. On my layout I use a Lenz 5-amp power station with no circuit breaker and have never had wiring burning out following a short. I use a 2.5mm solid copper wires for the bus, plus a dropper on every piece of track. 

 

 

Hi,

 

The track passed the coin test, is there a way of testing if a DCC Command Station is acting fast enough?.

 

Also shouldn't the RTR trains should be designed to cope with DC supplies (that can have slow acting current limiters)?.

 

The Heljan OO Class 128 Single car parcels units I bought for their chassis have wiring from the pickups that seems even thinner than that fitted to the Hornby 66 that burnt out its wiring.

 

Regards

 

Nick

[RFS]

1 hour ago, NIK said:

Hi,

 

The track passed the coin test, is there a way of testing if a DCC Command Station is acting fast enough?.

 

Also shouldn't the RTR trains should be designed to cope with DC supplies (that can have slow acting current limiters)?.

 

The Heljan OO Class 128 Single car parcels units I bought for their chassis have wiring from the pickups that seems even thinner than that fitted to the Hornby 66 that burnt out its wiring.

 

Regards

 

Nick

 

The coin test should be adequate provided that Command Station cuts out instantly, eg not after a second or two. Perhaps worth testing the point where your 66 had a problem with some decoder/pickup wire. As it's usually turnouts where the shorts occur after derailments, I've made sure there are stout droppers on both stock rails and the frog so that there is no dependency on rail joiners.

 

With DC, the wiring only needs to cope with at most 12v / 1 amp which is 12 watts of power. My Lenz system, for example, is 16v / 5 amp which is 80 watts of power. Enough to power a pair of 40W incandescent light bulbs and think how hot they get the moment you flick the switch. Huge difference and it's at that level constantly. Loco pickup wires should be able to cope with that momentarily. Also consider how thin the wiring is in solenoid point motors: fine if the pulse is very short, but a 1-2 second pulse from a 3-4 amp power supply  can easily burn the motor out, especially with Seeps (don't ask me how I know!). 

Edited May 5, 2019 by RFS

[cychan1228]

Thanks everyone your replies 

Actually I am looking for non-insulated wheels for Hornby Brighton Belle DMU:

 

 

I don't think Hornby R8234 would fit...

[RFS]

15 minutes ago, cychan1228 said:

Thanks everyone your replies 

Actually I am looking for non-insulated wheels for Hornby Brighton Belle DMU:

 

 

I don't think Hornby R8234 would fit...

 

 

Well your initial post did say you needed wheels for your Bachmann coach, not for the Hornby Brighton Belle EMU which already has lighting throughout …..

[cychan1228]

8 minutes ago, RFS said:

 

Well your initial post did say you needed wheels for your Bachmann coach, not for the Hornby Brighton Belle EMU which already has lighting throughout …..

 

oh yes, sorry, I got mixed with the two coaches