February 2008
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February 2008 |
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New Custom Traxx Decal Set for the Bachmann Peter Witt! Coming to the support of the hundreds of trolley fans who purchased the undecorated version of the recently released HO scale Bachmann Peter Witt from MicroMark, Custom Traxx has decided to release a full set of decals for the Baltimore version of the car. The set, CN-6119, will have all necessary details to finish the car in the original paint scheme with the red belt rail and accent striping, the second paint scheme with a smaller belt rail and no accent striping, the final all-yellow paint scheme and the "NCL" scheme used on some of the cars, which had light green in the window area. The set will contain separate route and destination signs and backgrounds, with over 85 different destination signs provided. Watch their website for final pricing and availability. The World's Greatest Hobby On Tour Show - Del Mar, CA Another Winner! Southern California had not hosted the World's Greatest Hobby on Tour (WGHoT) show since February 2005 when the show came to Long Beach, so local train lovers were really ready for this one. The Del Mar Fairgrounds hosted the show on January 12-13. Over $106,000.00 was expended in advertising by the show promoters with 4 color pull page ads in Classic Toy Trains, Garden Railways, Model Railroader, O Gauge Railroading and Railroad Model Craftsman, 378 TV commercials, 12 newspaper ads and 129 AM Radio spots. Also there were over 33,000 direct mail postcards and over 11,000 emails. To date nearly 400,000 people have attended The World's Greatest Hobby on Tour in the last three years. This show also lived up to expectations. Over 400 people were lined up to enter the show when the doors opened at 10:00AM on Saturday. Ten minutes later the hall was swarmed with people. Ticket takers were so overwhelmed that the show hired additional help on the spot just to get people into the hall on an expedient manner. At least 15,000 patrons visited the show on Saturday alone. The new HO scale Bachmann Peter Witts were being sold at the booth next to Custom Traxx. When the show opened, there were a dozen of them in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, St. Louis and Chicago liveries. By 1:30 P.M, there were none. It appears that Bachmann may have a real winner on their hands. John McWhirter's Bachmann in LATL livery was operated on the Southern California Traction Clubs display in the DC mode at the show as shown below:
The car had been equipped with a Miniatures by Eric HT-P2 trolley pole earlier in the week. Other than that the car was "out-of-the-box". There were a few new traction items shown at the show, among them being the O scale Atlas Brill Trolleys in New Jersey, New Orleans and Los Angeles colors:
We know it is not a trolley, but we did see the new MTH Erie Triplex in operation with its sound and smoke.
We still urge railfans never to miss a WGHoT show. The Bachmann Baltimore Peter Witt Bernie Rossbach received the Bachmann #84604 Baltimore Peter Witt and of course replaced the harp and wheel with a shoe. He reported that the car operates through six inch radius curves and the ORR turnouts without any problems. In fact, the Peter Witt tracked through a six inch reverse curve without any hesitation. The pole and shoe do need some further fine tuning since on the sharp curves, it tends to pull to the point of dewiring. In the overhead power mode only the left side wheels carry ground power, the right side is "dead." I will probably explore revising the wiring to so that both sides carry the ground power. All my operations are DC. The only other quandary is should he regauge the car to the Baltimore track gauge!!!! Bob Dietrich of the East Penn Traction Club turned his undecorated car into Baltimore Transit 6023 and enhanced the cars performance in the process. The entire story is detailed in Lesson 6-7 in the Trolleyville Schoolhouse. John McWhirter of the Southern California Traction Club received his Bachmann #84605 Peter Witt in Los Angeles Transit Lines colors on Tuesday, January 8th and immediately brought it to the Southern California Traction Club test track. As is currently the procedure, the car was first weighed for the record and the results were 5.4 ounces. Since this is an eight-wheel drive car, sufficient weight is important only to overcome the drag of the trolley pole. The car was operated in the DC mode as delivered. Initial two-rail operation was flawless. The car was then switched to overhead operation. In this mode, only the four wheels on the "blind" or doorless side pick-up power. While the car ran well, pick-up from the trolley pole as supplied with the car was erratic. It could be the wheel/harp or the base or the connection inside the car. The pole is definitely the weak part of the car. John opted to remove the roof and check out the situation. He decided to replace the pole with a Miniatures by Eric HT-P2 and he modified the roofwalk and roof to accept the SCTC-2 Insulator and SCTC-1 Pole Pivot. He shortened the pivot to be the same length as the original trolley pole mount, secured both the SCTC-1 and SCTC-2 to the underside of the roof with ACC and reassembled the car for final certification. Complete details of this pole replacement are contained in Lesson 6-8 in the Trolleyville Schoolhouse. The car then operated flawlessly at realistic speeds, 22 scale miles per hour at 7.0 volts and traversed the test track 6", 9" and 12" radius cars with ease. Gear noise diminished after about fifteen minutes of running. The car was operated in the DC mode with the decoder installed for a few hours at the World's Greatest Hobby on Tour show at Del Mar, CA on January 12-13, 2008. So far, we like the car and we hope that Bachmann releases another trolley next year. George Huckaby obtained the #84604 Baltimore version of the Bachmann Peter Witt and performed the same pole replacement done earlier by John McWhirter and began testing in the DCC mode. Both cars were placed on module 970 and testing began. Both decoders were readdressed to the car number, and the cars ran smoothly and without hesitation. This car and an LATL version were taken to the SCTC test track and certified in the DC mode at 22-23 smph at 7.0 volts. It looks like this car is a definite winner!
The Southern California Traction Club has found this car to be an exellect performer and they applaud Bachmann for bringing out a car really unique to one city. If this car proves successful (good sales), maybe other unique cars will be made. SCTC club members had already obtained 13 of them at the time this article was written. Another Trolley Model Con-Cor International Limited, 8101 E. Research Court,
The car should be available by the end of 2008 and will be available in several road names. The Trolleyville Times supports this project and has made the resources of the Trolleyville Library available to Con-Cor for this effort. Coming from Light Rail Products, 1406 Crespi Drive, Pacifica, CA 94044, phone 650-355-4815 has announced their first car-body kit, LRP 300. The kit, which is now available, is based on an Atlantic Shore Line wooden steeple-cab locomotive. A completed and finished kit is shown below:
The resin kit comes less trucks for $150.00 plus shipping/handling. Trucks are available separately. Check the Light Rail Products catalog at www.lightrailproducts.com for more details. ________________________________________________________ More Traction Decal Sets! Custom Traxx announced at the World's Greatest Hobby show on Tour Show in Del Mar, CA that they will shortly release ready-to-run kits for the ex-Milan Peter Witt Cars now running in San Francisco. This is a joint project of Bowser Manufacturing, Custom Traxx and Miniatures by Eric. While the shell, trolley poles and details will be provided by Eric, Bowser will provide a floor which will support the Bowser 125100 mechanism and a floor to support a Bull Ant in-line power truck with 64" wheelbase. The Custom Traxx decal set will allow the kit buyer to finish the car in the orange, light/dark green or yellow/white schemes. The set is CN-1807 and is available separately at $8.95. It is hoped that a similar joint arrangement will be used for a model of the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle. The price for the complete kit has not yet been determined. In an interview last month, a company spokesman related, "...Another new decal set for Kansas City PCC cars, CN-750, will be released early this month. This set has been in development for over three years awaiting front and side roll sign data. This data was finally acquired in December and the set was placed in work...". "...This set was designed for the IHP #87127 Kansas City All-electric PCC shell #87127 and an uncommon amount of effort has gone into this set. Now that the set is ready, Custom Traxx has learned that there are may be no shells currently available for modelers. Making decals requires close coordination between the model maker, the decal maker and the prototype requirements. Little errors and omissions made in model making such as an oversize trolley catcher or reduced letterboard size play havoc with designing decals. The oversize headlights in the brass trolleys imported in the 1950-1970 era sometimes eliminated places where car numbers or heralds were supposed to be located. We have worked with many professional model railroad suppliers (A-line, Bowser, Con-Cor, Corgi, Hollywood Foundry, KND Enterprises, Miniatures by Eric, MTS Imports, etc) and by working together in an open environment, most problems were resolved before models are finally cast and resources are wasted corrected or adjusting things that do not fit. Regardless of the prototype correctness, the decals sold must fit on the model and look prototypical. Destination signs are a very critical component of exterior detail on a streetcar, especially on a PCC car due to the size and prominence of the sign..." ________________________________________________________ Replacement Trolley Poles Available from MTS! In our October
2007 issue, in our review of the MTS HO Scale Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Co "Brilliner" we mentioned that the trolley poles supplied with the cars had a problem. Specifically we stated, "...The four-spring trolley poles, while excellent in appearance, would not raise more than 30 degrees from the horizontal and would not reach our overhead wire. MTS told us that the manufacturer would correct this problem and the poles will be replaced as soon as the replacements arrive..." True to his word, Joel Lovitch supplied a pair of the replacement poles to the Times early last month. They are outstanding. If you wish to exchange your older poles, please contact MTS Imports, at 845-342-5623 for arrangements for the exchange. Protection, Censorship or ? In our previous issue, we reported that one of Trolleyville's major companies had applied to join a Yahoo chat group, and has been "disapproved" by the moderator. Well traction fans, we are all fortunate! On January 3rd, a member of that group emailed us with the name of the moderator and that explained all of it. The moderator of that group turned out to be exactly who we thought it was. He posted a response to our article on January 4th and removed the post the very next day, along with all others related to the same issue. The company notified us that the January 4th response was sent to them by their customers and contained so many inaccuracies and omissions that they felt forced to reply to their customers in considerable detail. The company was providing detailed responses to their customers. On January 20th, an email was unexpectedly received by the company from the moderator of 'hotractionmodeling', inviting the them to apply again to the group, assuring them that this time they would be approved, and possibly bringing the whole unfortunate incident to a close. On Thursday, January 24th, the company did apply again to join the group and was approved within 12 hours. They also have made postings since that time. For those who desire to review the latest complete company response to the entire incident, click here. |
DCC for Trolley Cars by Howard Andrews My modeling interest is with the Pittsburgh Railways Company, who at one time ran nearly 1000 PCC’s over 600 miles of track in and around the city of Pittsburgh. I really wanted to be able to run multiple cars and DCC seemed to be the best solution – especially for the modular layout I’m building. I’ve been advised both ways… some people saying DCC never works with overhead, and others saying it works great. Well, from my experience with my small modular layout, the bottom line is that DCC works fine IF I KEEP THE TRACK, OVERHEAD AND TROLLEY POLES CLEAN!!!! A few important points – my modules are built with ORR Track in the streets and both rails are common return. My overhead is powered and when running DC was the positive from the power supply. So basically here’s the wiring for DCC operation.
Our conversion candidate for this exercise is a Fairfield Single Truck Snow sweeper which has already been repowered with a Northwest Short Line PDT.  The tools we’ll need for decoder installation are:
For decoders I’ve been using the most basic Z scale unit available (Digitrax DZ123). To date they have proven reliable for my layout, and I really don’t need more then simply motor control and lights. Some models have the HO decoder (Digitrax DH123) which also work just fine. I simply find the Z sized decoder easier to installed in some of the smaller models like this one. OK, having assembled the tools now comes the scary part – disassemble the model so you can get to the power truck
I used an older style PDT which was not DCC ready. The power is supplied by tabs contacting the wheels and feeding the motor directly. For DCC operation the motor need to be isolated, so at the motor end you’ll need to remove the pickup tabs by simply cutting them off. This leaves a simple solder tab you can attach the DCC motor supply wires to. You can tell the motor end – there are metal ‘dimples’ that the tabs contact which are the supplies to the motors. (The new PDTs are much simpler to wire for DCC and instructions for included with them.)
After isolating the motor attach the Gray and Orange leads from the decoder to the solder tabs at the motor end on the PDT. For this model there really is not a forward or reverse so I didn't have worry about which lead went to which terminal.
Here’s the PDT fully wired and ready to be reinstalled. The black lead is to the pickup wheels, which are common in my set up. The red lead is left free and will be attached to the trolley pole after the PDT is installed.
Before installing the PDT back into the model I bench tested it. Set the control station to 3 (the default loco #) and clip the leads to the PDT. It should power up and run in forward and reverse – if not, check the decoder and your wiring.
The PDT and decoder are reinstalled to the model. A mini-connector soldered to the red lead to connect it to the trolley pole and then my ‘head lamps’ attached. I used the 1.5 Model Power bulbs with a resistor – but you only need to install the resistor in the common lead.
GOO the lamps to the body, tidy up the wires with some tape, plug the connector together for the trolley pole and your ready to close up the model. There is really not Front or Back for the model, but I did set it up so the model would run with the large door on the curb side when running on street trackage with the controller set to Forward.
And here’s the car completed and running back to the car barn. Best of all notice was a great job it is doing – not a flake of snow in sight! For more information about the Detroit United Railways traction club, click here. Happy Trolley Modeling! Traction Display at Montessori School Early Friday afternoon, January 4th, Custom Traxx received an urgent phone call from David Hochman, one of the authors of a soon-to-be-released children's book. There was a Charity Bash planned at the Mar Vista Montessori School. He had planned a little fundraiser to launch his book, The Potty Train, on Sunday January 6th. He had planned a riding train in the parking lot for the children but the weather forecast promised lots of rain and they needed some sort of train display inside in a very small area.
They were featuring both authors of the book and the best-selling children's book illustrator Derek Anderson along with roots-rock family band Jambo. Plans for the afternoon included Arts, Live Music, Food, Trains, Family Fun.
Custom Traxx told them what we could do in such short notice and they agreed and the appearance was on. George Huckaby, John McWhirter and George Jones of the Southern California Traction Club set up two of their modules. module 970 (Custom Traxx demo module) and 061A (Subway train module) on a draped 8' table and the display was on.
In addition, a display, including seventeen model Suydam, MTS, Bowser and resin kit trolleys was exhibited and explained. There was emphasis on the Pacific Electric since the former Pacific Electric Venice Line ran within two blocks of the school.
George, as a Mr. Conductor stand-in, is shown below with the two authors of the "Potty Train" book, David Hochman & Ruth Kennison; with one of the many patrons who stopped by the display for an explanation of trolleys in the Southern California, with the "theme" of the day and as engineer of the "Potty Train"!
The Montessori method is an educational method for children, based on theories of child development originated by Italian educator Maria Montessori in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is applied primarily in preschool and elementary school settings, though some Montessori high schools exist. The method is characterized by an emphasis on self-directed activity on the part of the child and clinical observation on the part of the teacher. It stresses the importance of adapting the child's learning environment to his or her developmental level, and of the role of physical activity in absorbing academic concepts and practical skills. We noted many children but no misbehaving children. No one tried to destroy our display and children seem to know how to respect the rights of others. For more information on Montessori education, click here. Taking traction modeling to the general public is a main goal of the Southern California Traction Club and is ardently supported by Custom Traxx. |
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