davetheroad

Just bent one, it works!. Thinks - Is it really necessary to have the hooks on each coupler as uncoupling is even easier with one hook.

Bluetooth have just announced that they have developed the technology to drive DCC decoders and sound cards through their Bluerail board and Bluetooth Apps!.

Well I think I solved it, hopefully! Easing out the centre axle boxes fixed 5 of my 8 wagons but I was after a cheap fix that worked every time. So I replaced the outer wheels with ones from a Hornby brake van and that worked. It so happens that I have 6 Hornby brake vans and two box vans, all with 3 hole disc wheels. You can't get cheaper than that. The Dapol wheels fit the Hornby stock. ps - Bachmann wheels don't work, the axle bearing cone is a different profile and the wheels are a tight fit in the Dapol tanks.

Interesting, I just rushed out and checked my newish Dapol tanks. Indeed a couple of them can derail while being propelled through some points, specifically a small radius code 100 and a curved turnout which has had the radius reduced. A quick think then I popped out the middle wheelset and no derailments. so the problem lies with the middle wheels. I checked on a flat glass mirror and the wheels line up perfectly so when they cross points some wagons actually balance on the middle wheels. Maybe all that is needed is to provide some vertical play in the middle axle boxes. How would you do that?

Talking about battery development I remember the senior engineer commenting about why their very promising new technology started failing after a few months use. He said the problem was we don't really know how this stuff works at a molecular level. On a positive note - I have lost the link to the BBC item. They showed a new technology based on sulphur? that could give up to 5 times? the capacity. Apparently the problem with sulphur is bits break off the anode and degrade the battery so they engineered the anode to have the same characteristics as the inside of your intestine. All those sticky out hair like structures trap the bits that fall off so they still function. The downside is less recharge cycles but this is countered by more time between recharges. Hope it works. For those with more space for the batteries how about Lithium Ferric Phosphate?. It appears they are safer, deliver nominal 3.2V and are available in AA size with 400mAh or 600mAh. They just fit in 00 scale body width and a pair with a 9V voltage booster might work. Pity an AAA size is not available. For those with plenty of space you have NiMH at 1.2V per cell. AAA size can have up to 1000mAh? and You can fit 4 of them in a 00 coach or wagon giving 4.8V for your voltage booster.

Just a quick update about sound. I have two Bluehorse boards so set up one loco as a diesel and the other steam. Switched on the sounds. You can have the chuffs etc switched off but the bells and whistles still work. I started up the diesel and accelerated so there were diesel sounds. Then switched to the steam loco, started it and accelerated, the chuffs were there but surprisingly so were the diesel sounds. The app is blending the 2 sound tracts!.

IS HYBRID POWER THE FUTURE FOR LOCOMOTIVE CONTROL? I have just started evaluating the Bluerail Bluehorse board and it has an intriguing feature. It can take power either from the track or a battery and there are separate inputs for both. The track power can be either plain DC or DCC. The battery power is of course DC. The interesting bit is you can have both power sources attached at the same time and normally the board will take its power from the track. If the track power is interrupted it immediately takes power from the battery. If the track power is restored it switches back to that. Of course you can miss out the track connection and run deadrail. In essence the battery is a substitute for the 'stay alive' capacitors that a DCC decoder can use to deal with power interruptions. The differences are the battery does not recharge after use but can provide power for a much greater length of poor track.....as I lost the finished version of this text the following is abridged - grrh! One of my standard configurations uses a 400mAh battery to give about 1 hour of deadrail running. If 1% of a layout had bad track my battery would last 100 hours as a stay alive. How about hybrid running? If all the turnouts, turntables, reversing loops etc, all the complicated bits of a DC or DCC layout were deadrail the rest could be simple power feeds. If 20% of the track was deadrail my 1 hour battery life would become 5 hours. Actually it will be more as that 5 hours is what you would get if a single axle on the loco was picking up current. Multiple axles could shorten the deadrail to an apparent 4% so I can now get 20 hours running out of my battery. This hybrid system could please deadrailers, DC people and DCC fans . Problems - The Bluerail Bluehorse board has the magic switch to handle the switching but so far seems to have no way to monitor the battery voltage including with use of a battery booster. My Deltang Rx boards have the battery monitoring feature but no magic switch. Are these 'magic' switches available? I have emailed a question to Bluerail. ps - don't intend to convert my 30 Deltang locos back to track power as they work well.

Thanks for the information Nile. I took a look at the Rigado site and that 350 module is very small and powerful so hopefully there will be a smaller board produced in due course. I presume of course that batteries provide clean power? Maybe the size of the board also had something to do with Bachmann and Bluerail being in the USA. If you take the UK loading gauge of say 8 feet at 00 scale that is 32mm and the USA loading gauge of say 10.5 feet at HO scale is 36mm. The board is slightly too wide to fit in 7 of the 22 locos I have tried and that might be due to it being designed for the USA market!. I had a quick test session this afternoon on my rolling road with an old Bachmann controller set to 12V. It was interesting to see that although you could use the board with DC power you could not have a DC loco and a Bluerail sharing the same layout. If you turned down the power to slow the DC loco the Bluerail one slowed as well. The Android app is not complete either but as there Is so much stuff there it could take some time to sort it all out. There is not much information on the bluerail site about what all these advanced options etc do. I think we need some written explanations? I have already started a wish list :- item 1 - onboard battery voltage monitoring with an app warning when the voltage falls too low and it is time to recharge the batteries. My Deltang units have a similar feature with the option to use with voltage regulators, monitoring the input voltage of the regulator before it is boosted. My workaround will be to use an audible battery alarm which then cuts the power if the voltage of one of the lipo cells drops below 3.3V, however this is a bulky item. This is also relevant to the need for a 'stay alive' capability if you are using DC or DCC power.

Excellent report and I am glad I won't have to repeat a lot of it. I am taking a different approach as my layout is deadrail so I have just taken delivery of 2 of the battery versions of the board. They arrived from CoastalDCC the day after ordering along with two 8 pin wiring harnesses. If you want one you better hurry as there are not many left in stock or so it appears. I will be using an Android tablet. I intend to test the boards with a tender drive Hornby Princess Royal which means putting the bits in a brake coach and, although my layout is early BR steam an early cheapo Hornby green class 55 Deltic. As this has a motor bogie there is a vast amount of space inside for all the bits and it is DCC ready. I will try the Deltic first and hopefully it will arrive Tuesday.

Nice blog!. I notice you mention the board shuts down if there is any power disruption however small. On the bluerail site they say if you connect a battery this will take over automatically if the track power is disrupted. This does not help you much as there is no space for the batteries and associated circuitry. I intend to operate at 12V, actually from a battery as my layout is all deadrail. However if I was running from track power I would still install a small capacity battery so I have the equivalent of DCC stay alive. If the loco was drawing 0.5A a pair of 100mAh batteries should theoretically give you about 20 minutes of power disruption protection. I think it is a good idea to buy the battery version with the extra leads as it avoids all those soldering problems.

The bluerail boards arrived today, impressive as I only ordered yesterday. My first impression is they are huge, the smaller board in the photo is one of my Deltang receivers I use in my other locos. Bluerail need to shrink the footprint a lot. Luckily the board just fits in the coach I will be using. Next I need to build the battery voltage regulator bits. I intend to use a Pololu 12V booster with a 2S 7.4V Lipo battery.

I ordered a couple of battery power boards and harnesses today from coastal DCC which I intend to evaluate in both steam and diesel locos. The current board design is large so for steam I am going to put the board and batteries in a corridor brake 3rd coach attached to my Hornby tender drive Princess 4-6-2 loco. For the modern loco I am looking for a second hand one with lots of space inside the body. Apparently a lot of Hornby locos have motorised bogie drive so I suppose any of those will do although I do like the look of a class 37.

I was looking at the groove cube shutter as it only about 1 inch square so can fit in a wagon/coach etc. They are available in the USA for less than $15 new but when I checked on Amazon UK they want over £50 for one! Where is the justification for that?

Also looking forward to getting my hands on a pair of the boards. I will be using them deadrail but don't want to buy a deadrail kit!. All I need is the battery wires attached to the board. In fact IMO it would be better if they just supplied the board with a couple of SIL sockets soldered to the battery pads. I am sourcing my own batteries and will use a 2S pair feeding the bluerail board via a hobbyking switch/battery protector and a Pololu 12V voltage regulator, at least that is the idea. Have you found anyone here in the UK that can supply those little 1" cube speakers that feature on the bluerail site?

Is this where you don't have a controller as such, but a power supply is connected to the rails via a radio receiver and what you have is essentially a DC layout with a walk about controller?

Model trains may be fundamentally different to boats and planes but I find I use mine in a similar manner. A full on comprehensive operating session uses about 16 locos with about 24 batteries. I simply pop fully charged batteries in the locos at the start of the session, it takes less than 1 minute per loco. At the end of the session I remove the batteries and recharge them. A 'normal' operating session might only have a few locos, maybe 4 or 5. I use E-flite style 1S batteries and connect them in series for locos drawing more than about 0.4A . I find using 9V through a Pololu voltage regulator gives plenty of power, enough to have my large 4-6-2 pacifics pulling a 12 coach train at over a scale 60mph which is what I am comfortable with for my fiddle yard curves. The charging is via an E-flite 4 battery charger and 2 USB chargers so I can charge 6 batteries at the same time. I am always removing engines from the track, using Peco loco lifts, I also remove most of the fiddly bits such as brake rodding etc as I will knock them off anyway and I can't see them at operating distances!.

What you need is for bluerail to modify their board so it charges the onboard battery when power is available. ps - I have several points in your post that I sort of disagree with but as you say I am already converted and have done the hard/fiddly bits!.

Like it!

Interesting! thinks - how about a little balloon you inflate under the plate, a quick squeeze and away you go

No problem, just replace with another free one! I have 2 problems with the Kirby system. Over 140 wagons/coaches, none of which have Bachmann non magnetic tails. Over precise positioning of wagons on coupler, not good at a distance for my eyes.

I am trialing the Brian Kirby system and also a non magnetic one using springy clear plastic strips cut from supermarket grape boxes. I don't mind my layout looking somewhat 'trainsettey' so the choice will be what is most reliable.

I have ordered two for evaluation purposes and intend to fit the first one in a old tender drive Hornby Princess Royal class. As this locos task is to pull 12 coach passenger trains around the layout at a scale 60 mph plus the tender drive handles the job OK but suffers from excessive stiction from a standard start. I will fit the bluerail board in a passenger brake coach which can also hold one of those little Bluetooth speakers for 'onboard' sound.

If you don't already know the Bluerail app is available for Ios and also Android. I was put off looking at this system because it was initially only for Ios. now they have almost completed the android version I can use my cheap android tablet. The boards are not available outside the USA but they will be once there are sufficient orders, 50 I think, to fund the application for European certification. The boards are apparently already compliant but they need the promised cash to pay the application fee!.

It seems to me that any substitute type of motor has to be a plug and play replacement for the traditional DC motor, and run on traditional 12V DC. that is not going to happen anytime soon as there is no commercial advantage in introducing such a motor. The hobby has the 12V DC base specification and that is how it will remain for the foreseeable future?

Isn't this going off topic? Not that BlueRail is on topic as far as DCC concerned as it has nothing to do with DCC and would be better located in the radio control special interest section!.