Additional Pickups on Adjacent Vehicles

[ISW]

16 hours ago, RFS said:

Here's another connector from Wizard Models I stumbled across by accident this evening. Lot more reasonable in price too!

Indeed they are well priced, but that's because they are just the more common 1/10" spacing pins (PCB connectors). I've got quite a stock of those and they are just too big, in my opinion.

 

Ian

[Sir TophamHatt]

Have you looked at Bachmann's effort?

Specifically the City of Truro.

 

They have essentially mounted one plug permanently on the tender, which allows you to connect and disconnect the "loco" side easily.  This means the plug is completely hidden and it's just two wires between the vehicles.

[ISW]

4 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

Have you looked at Bachmann's effort?

Specifically the City of Truro.

 

They have essentially mounted one plug permanently on the tender, which allows you to connect and disconnect the "loco" side easily.  This means the plug is completely hidden and it's just two wires between the vehicles.

Sir,

 

Thanks for that, it's an interesting idea. I found a photo of the coupling on RMWeb after a bit of Google searching:

 

I can see how it works, and would work for a Class 03 and shunting wagon. But I'm not entirely convinced it's suitable for a DMU connection.

 

Ian

[cheesysmith]

Micro JST 1.25 Connectors 2 Pin 5 Pairs Male Female Plugs Cables Wire Lipo RC UK | eBay

 

Copy and paste the above, should give you these

 

 

Pictured next to a DMU to give you a size idea. If worried about the size, just mount the female half under the bufferbeam.

[ISW]

I thought some 'experimentation' with magnets was a good idea, so I made a purchase from TheBay of some 2mm diameter neodymium magnets at 0.5mm and 1mm thicknesses:

 

As I plan to use the 0.5mm variety, I used some 1mm thickness ones to test soldering to wires. I used some offcuts of 7/0.2mm wire and these came out as below:

 

Yes, the magnets did still work after soldering (I had the magnets on a flat steel surface during soldering to dissipate the heat) but the wire I used is not sufficiently flexible. The stiffness of the wire is such that it can easily overcome the magnetic attraction. I'll have to try again with some thinner wire ...

 

As a proof-of-concept it wasn't too bad, but more experimentation required me thinks.

 

Ian

[Sir TophamHatt]

On 23/04/2021 at 21:11, ISW said:

I thought some 'experimentation' with magnets was a good idea, so I made a purchase from TheBay of some 2mm diameter neodymium magnets at 0.5mm and 1mm thicknesses:

 

As a proof-of-concept it wasn't too bad, but more experimentation required me thinks.

Interesting.

And did the magnets conduct properly?

[Butler Henderson]

TCS do some small connectors 

[melmerby]

The 4 pin connector on the Bachmann CoT tender are JST plug & sockets and the same as on most of their and Hornby's coupled tenders.

I have converted two Bachmann 2251 to tender pickups using them.

 

If you want very thin wire for magnets, use dcc decoder wire.

 

 

[ISW]

17 hours ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

Interesting.

And did the magnets conduct properly?

That part worked perfectly well, with the additional pickups on the adjacent vehicle improving running of my Lima Class 101 2-car no end.

 

Ian

[ISW]

6 hours ago, melmerby said:

The 4 pin connector on the Bachmann CoT tender are JST plug & sockets and the same as on most of their and Hornby's coupled tenders.

I have converted two Bachmann 2251 to tender pickups using them.

 

If you want very thin wire for magnets, use dcc decoder wire.

 

 

That's actually what I used in the end. Well,  the thin wires I used were sold to me as DCC decoder wire, but I've no way of telling.

 

Ian

[ISW]

6 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

TCS do some small connectors 

Yes, those are quite small, but 'fiddly' to couple / uncouple without man-handling (I suppose that'll now need renaming as person-handling ...) both vehicles at the same time. The magnets make coupling / uncoupling much easier with both vehicles already on the track.

 

Ian

[melmerby]

2 minutes ago, ISW said:

That's actually what I used in the end. Well,  the thin wires I used were sold to me as DCC decoder wire, but I've no way of telling.

 

Ian

It looks thinner than normal interconnect wire you would normally use for layout wiring but not as thin as some as fitted to decoders, which is very flexible.

[ISW]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

It looks thinner than normal interconnect wire you would normally use for layout wiring but not as thin as some as fitted to decoders, which is very flexible.

It turned out that flexibility was not the real problem, more an issue with fatigue. Some conducting silicone would have been great, instead of copper strands!

 

Ian