Bridges and Crossings

Intial bashing of Bachman and Model Power crossings... prior to servos and LEDs.

a couple of bridges - glued together Atlas bridges. Dreaming of modeling the NS Wabash lift bridge at Hannibal MO. It has a 400+' lift, a 100+' panel, 1 250+' truss and 4 ~175' trusses. That works out to over 17 real feet at HO scale.

2 level car carrier in progress

One side and the other of an undecorated Walthers, after painting. Waiting for the muse to deliver the iconic image and script to decal onto the panels.

Electrical Measurements part 3 - later that same day

Regulated power supplies deliver a flat voltage :) Hooked in line with a rheostat (as in a fan speed control) should adjust the voltage from Lo 0 .. 10..15 volts

GSC 10 amp regulated 14+ volts multimeter about 10 volts on an oscilloscope.

Pyramid 2.5 amp delivers about 10 volts on an oscilloscope.

Electrical Measurements part 2

Hooked up some other train transformers. Makes me wonder how they pass electrical inspection to get the stamp of approval. Will hook up some motor controllers some day.. just reading the information on them though: they seem to all output PWM :( Maybe just use a large rheostat on a 12 or 24 volt power supply as they seem to output a clean flat voltage.

Bachman at about 6 volts

Model Power at about 10 volts

Electrical measurements

Servo amperage:
Name (amps) [torque]
Hitec HS 50 (0.2) [8.3oz] {smaller than HS55}
Hitec HS 55 (0.19) [15.3oz]
Hitec Digital 5045 (0.28) [13.4oz]
Parallax Futaba S148 (0.56) [?oz uhm, more than those- a standard size servo]

a multimeter hooked in line using a modified servo wire ( red wire cut so the meter could be in line). The servos were operated in their functional duty : Lifting a rocket tube or moving a 4 unit-train of cars. None were 'stalled' so these measurements have only a relative context.


Locomotive Power
an RC ESC only works with a radio, Never mind- it outputs a Voltage Clipped Down from the 7.2 V input battery to whatever level is set for the motor speed.


MRC 9500 (HO train transformer) at about 2 volts
has a voltage spike twice the normal voltage : ? to 'bump' the locomotive? i dunno, it was a SHOCK to see it :(

MRC done again (17 feb) to check various voltage levels. They all have a 'bump' decreasing as the voltage rises to 9 volts... above 9 volts the signal is the same ... a multimeter reads increasing voltages... i dunno what that spike was in the previous view... it looks to be a different time and or voltage amount per grid...

PWM servo signal was of course just spikes of voltage and varying in voltage level, the variation due to the length of the signal variation 'adding' up to different levels i guess

Motor controllers : ? TBD ? investigate the output waveform ... hopefully a level voltage that will change IAW the desired voltage.