Remote uncoupling van, massoth uncouplers.

[beavercreek]

Paul, it is a really neat use of the uncouplers. Excellent work. What wire did you use for the door opening system?

 

[playmofire]

Two very well thought out and neatly executed customs.

The door opening and closing seems spot on now. The slight hesitation adds to the realism from my experience of sliding doors - there's usually something in a runner to cause a problem!

 

[PaulRhB]

The wire is just 1.5mm brass wire. Easy to shape and easy to adjust, there's an omega loop in the linkage so if it overruns it doesn't damage anything. The loops on the ends were just wound round the end of needle nose pliers.

 

[Cliff George]

Very nice install Paul. The door opening is good.

What I found was that using ball bearing wheels sets for the power pickups reduced the rolling resistance of the wagon too much. This often means that, particularly for single wagons, uncoupling was not successful since even when the auto coupler was disengaged, the wagon was still pulled along a bit before uncoupling because of its low rolling resistance. In addition recoupling with the auto coupler not engaged just moved the wagon rather than coupling up. Also if uncoupling did occur and the track was less than exactly level (such as outside in the garden) then the wagon would roll away anyway.

I found that the solution was to use metal wheel with these:

It also is a bit cheaper.

My project over Christmas was to equip all five of my Flascherlzug cars with auto uncouplers so that I can perhaps do some auto rearranging of wagon order with my automatic computer system.

The Massoth uncouplers are great but I only use them where I?ve already got a decoder to plug them into, i.e. on locos. For wagons it is cheaper and uses less space to use the Fertig/Heyn plate, together with a digital servo. Its about £35.00 per wagon, excluding power pick up arrangements.

 

[PaulRhB]

Nice job Cliff, I did seriously consider using the servos to uncouple too due to the cost saving but my home designed version meant having no hook on the other stock. I'd not seen those you've used.
The rolling resistance is very low but as my layout is indoors it has to be levelled when set up and I was intending actually dropping the level towards the bufferstops to roll into it anyway as that's where the unloading area is. I'm also going to use two big weights I have to ballast it and the other wagon I'm doing to give them more heft.

 

[Cliff George]

I'd not seen those you've used.

It's a Uhlenbrock 81310 digital-servo. It is a servo complete with a DCC decoder in it. One wire needs to be connected to each wheel pickup and it is done. The cheapest I've seen them is about Euro 26.00, the uncoupling plate itself is Euro 10.

 

[Madman]

I'm curious, Paul, as to why you felt you had to fix the swiveling bogies in place.

 

[3Valve]

Wow

 

[a98087]

Impressive piece of engineering/modelling here,

And to answer madmans question, the swivelling wheels are glued up, as it makes them easier to push the wagon during shunting.

Dan

 

[pugwash]

Magic opening doors, the kids* will love it! Top job but a pity I'm analogue.
*over 40s

 

[stockers]

Brill, great, amazing.
Nice neat jon too. A great idea and it works well too.
Adding the door is a great use of the existing features.

 

[playmofire]

An extra touch to the door would be to add an appropriately posed figure inside the van and attached to the door who would appear to be opening and closing it.

 

[PaulRhB]

I'm curious, Paul, as to why you felt you had to fix the swiveling bogies in place.

It's an experiment, one wagon will be fixed and one left free to move and we will see how they perform. I've fixed them with screws rather than glue so it will literally take seconds to free them on the van or lock them on the wagon (see below). I find the wheels look odd when they are left in a siding and aren't in line with the axlebox, as I use R3 or greater they seem to work fine when locked up so I'm seeing if it's ok with the auto uncoupler too.
I'm going to hide the internal wiring with a stack of crates and maybe a bloke looking through them.

Right here we go wagon number two
Both wagons are on address 3 so you select 3 and then the van is F1 & 2 while the open wagon is F3 & 4.

As I said above I decided to leave the pivots free on this one so I can compare them in use. Now with the open wagon I could have hidden the decoder in the load but I thought it would be more fun to be able to hide it all and leave the wagon empty if I wanted it. I will usually have a crate in at one end to designate which end is which and add a bit of weight to make the pickup more reliable. This one is uncouplers only.

close up of the decoder, the wiring is visible so will be covered with a black sleeve.

and the crate that hides a metal weight and designates the end for function 3.

 

[Steve]

Brilliant Paul love the videos

 

[Madman]

Magic opening doors, the kids* will love it! Top job but a pity I'm analogue.
*over 40s

FEAR NOT PUGWASH !! There are many ways to have animation without having to go the digital route. I have built several operating cars using R/C and simple solenoids and motors. I really don't want to detract from Paul's very excellent thread, here is one I am still fine tuning, just so you can see that there is hope for us non digital types.
http://youtu.be/XTVSwxibUMw

 

[Madman]

I'm curious, Paul, as to why you felt you had to fix the swiveling bogies in place.

It's an experiment, one wagon will be fixed and one left free to move and we will see how they perform. I've fixed them with screws rather than glue so it will literally take seconds to free them on the van or lock them on the wagon (see below). I find the wheels look odd when they are left in a siding and aren't in line with the axlebox, as I use R3 or greater they seem to work fine when locked up so I'm seeing if it's ok with the auto uncoupler too.
I'm going to hide the internal wiring with a stack of crates and maybe a bloke looking through them.

Right here we go wagon number two
Both wagons are on address 3 so you select 3 and then the van is F1 & 2 while the open wagon is F3 & 4.

As I said above I decided to leave the pivots free on this one so I can compare them in use. Now with the open wagon I could have hidden the decoder in the load but I thought it would be more fun to be able to hide it all and leave the wagon empty if I wanted it. I will usually have a crate in at one end to designate which end is which and add a bit of weight to make the pickup more reliable. This one is uncouplers only.

close up of the decoder, the wiring is visible so will be covered with a black sleeve.

and the crate that hides a metal weight and designates the end for function 3.

When I was new to LGB, I asked the dealer about shunting operations and the swiveling two wheel bogies. His reply was that he really didn't know the physics of it, but that the engineers at Lehmann had figured it out and he had never had an issue on his own layout. I agree that the wheels look odd when they are not lined up with the journals.

 

[PaulRhB]

There are many ways to have animation without having to go the digital route. I have built several operating cars using R/C and simple solenoids and motors.

I agree completely and I'm working on a rc model now that is quite a bit cheaper than a digital version would be. With the trains though I like the options dcc gives for controlling the sound so I didn't want to add another controller just for the uncoupling.
Thread drift is all part of GSC

 

[PaulRhB]

the engineers at Lehmann had figured it out and he had never had an issue on his own layout. I agree that the wheels look odd when they are not lined up with the journals.

It certainly works well pushing but I'm not so sure for shunting, I'm expecting it to catch more with the free pivoting, hence the little experiment
It's probably essential on R1 or you'd have a lot of derailments on the joints due to the angle of attack of the flanges on such sharp corners. Just look at the brass dust after running a Stainz on a R1 loop for hours and that's significantly shorter than these wagons. Without the heft of a loco long wheelbase stock would be a right pain on R1.

 

[Madman]

There are many ways to have animation without having to go the digital route. I have built several operating cars using R/C and simple solenoids and motors.

I agree completely and I'm working on a rc model now that is quite a bit cheaper than a digital version would be. With the trains though I like the options dcc gives for controlling the sound so I didn't want to add another controller just for the uncoupling.
Thread drift is all part of GSC

No put down of your method was intended Paul. I'm just always looking for the cheap and simple method. My brain likes simple.

 

[PaulRhB]

Me too Dan, if one asks the question more were thinking it, and like the servo Cliff showed I'm just as open to simpler and cheaper ideas. I've already thought of a couple of uses for that servo Cliff showed but that will have to wait a bit as I need to finish the layout by April
I'm only going with what I know about now and delighted to find other methods of doing it.
If this thread, (and its drift), brings in better solutions for my original concept then it gives people all the info in one place.