Bachmann 4-CEP

[royaloak]

I dont recall the interior lights being particularly bright on the 411s so why the obsession with interior bright enough to burn out your retinas if you were sat in the model?

 

I would rather have no lights than the current obsession with super bright interior LEDs.

[roythebus]

Having worked on the prototype units for a number of years, the interior lighting varied between coaches anyway, depending on whether the stock had compartments or were open coaches. The fact that "gimmicks" such as interior lighting cost so much is a put-off for me. I'm old-fashioned and can't get to grips with DCC stuff, it's too technical for me to understand, I'm a switches and relays person!

 

Remember the Blue Pullman is on the market at about £500, an excellent model but I didn't buy one. And that's for 6 coaches.

 

I'd suggest the latest pricing policy may be ue to the uncertainty of the current political situation affecting exchange rates, the cost of shipping as well as the R&D and production costs.

 

The UK is still a niche market. As I've said before in these pages, producing things to HO scale will always provide a better return as they are bought by collectors all over the world. As we model in 00, those models will only sell in the UK with very few going to overseas collectors.

[SRman]

The other alternative if using non-conductive couplings is to do a small amount of rewiring internally on each individual coach and wire the lights directly to the pickups. I bought a second-hand set that had had this modification done - something I reversed to take it back to factory standard, but it demonstrated it could be done, and done very easily with a little soldering.

[JSpencer]

We don,t know how many of the cost is for lighting and wiring. Maybe it makes up only 10% of the cost.

I agree if it halved the price (unlikely) the feature would be pointless to add as we can all do our own lighting for a lot less.

 

I do know that all 32 wheels pick up the juice and control of all electrical features in DCC is easy.

Hornby's VEP also has throughout wiring, cost about the same in the periods it was made but uses only the 8 wheels of the motor coach for pickups (which makes fitting the bogies the correct way around easy, as you unclip and re-clip most, except the end pair which need the guard irons sorted).

[dale159]

I do know that all 32 wheels pick up the juice

 

Well, sort of.

 

Only the motor coach picks up power for traction, the pickups in the 3 trailer cars go to a set of 4 diodes working as a bridge rectifier (AC side) of which the positive from the DC side is then used as a common positive for the lights in each coach.

 

Of the twin wires of the conductive couplings one is F0 reverse (yellow wire) and this operates the headcode blind LED at the trailing end, whilst it is wired through each PCB board its track between the two terminals doesn't interact with anything else on the 2 centre car boards.  The second wire is connected to F1 (Green) to operate the interior lights.

 

It is possible to modify the unit so that the interior lights work wholly off the bridge rectifiers thus freeing up the second coupling wire which could be used to give directional headcode blind lighting after appropriate modifications, (1 unit done, 1 more to do!).

 

Dale

[Gwiwer]

With more 4Cep units than I really need (two each in b/g and green) I am sorely tempted to invest in a couple of close-approximation catering vehicles and fit plain-bar couplers.  Lighting not required. Unless those power-bus things are all that works the headcode and double-reds at the back.

[dale159]

Unless those power-bus things are all that works the headcode and double-reds at the back.

Unfortunately they are, you could get it to work if you bridge between the rectifier +ve and the coupling terminal, alternatively just couple BEP to CEP with the non illuminated cab in the middle.

 

Dale

[SRman]

A good idea, Dale, but I'm not sure Rick (gwiwer) can fit 8-car trains on his current layout. That would work nicely on my own layout, and on Rick's old layout here in Oz.

[Gwiwer]

A good idea, Dale, but I'm not sure Rick (gwiwer) can fit 8-car trains on his current layout. That would work nicely on my own layout, and on Rick's old layout here in Oz.

 

Correct Jeff.

 

The new layout will cope with 5-car at best being designed to accommodate a loco+4TC or 5Bel unit at a pinch, or a 4Cep or 2x2Bil/Hal/EPB more often than not.

 

The old layout had a 34-metre circuit around which a full boat-train formation of 12Cep plus one or two MLVs would happily run for ages and you would be chatting away while waiting for the train to come back around .....