Uncle Al wrote:I've had a set back with the layout. I've glued the foam to the board and poured the pavement. I had to go back and remove the 'pavement' from between the rails as the wheels want to jump the track.
Sorry about the setback.
Out of curiosity, are you using"trolley-rail" (if such a thing is manufactured for model railways) or "conventional" (i.e. "heavy") rail? Street-railway rail is a very different beast than what is used on freight (and heavy passenger) roads Whereas conventional rail is the typical "I" shape with the wide flat web "foot" and curved "head", trolley-rail includes an attached barrier that forms a groove in which the cars' wheels' flanges ride. This solves the problem of derailments and makes street paving where there's a trolley line vastly easier as the paving crew just puts down the tarmac between the guards (trying not to get any in the flange-way) and steamrolls it. Turnouts in streetcar lines are also very different animals than in conventional railways and, if you're using any, it'd be best to get some diagrams and read up on the technology.
Street-railways are also very much of a train-track "system" where the tracks and cars need to be very much compatible or else derailments will occur. This happened in Boston in my memory twice: once when Boston was retiring its contingent of long-serving PCC equipment in favour of the Boeing-Vertol light-rail vehicles in the 1970s and just recently when the city purchased new low-floor cars from Breda. In the '70s, an entire line (the "Boston College" line) had to be reworked because the Boeing cars would consistently derail on the stretch and the PCCs never did, and in the mid 2000s the brand-new Bredas would routinely "take the ground" where the (long-since refurbed) Boeings and newer Kinki-Sharyo cars seldom did. I think there were some suspension mods to the Bredas as there was not any extensive trackwork performed.
Now I have a bit of an electrical problem and the car doesn't want to stay on the track. I will have to re-hang the overhead wire. I'm going with a .015 music wire which will be stiffer and not droop.
You'll also want to be very careful with the upward force your trolley pole exerts on the catenary. Some force is necessary to ensure a good connection (and trolley-pickups are prone to arcing even in the real world) but not so much as to produce any sideways thrust as the pole gets into an off-vertical position (as in when going around curves). This thrust is meaningless in real-world trolley systems (save that it can shove the catenary around a bit, another reason pantographs came into use) but in models may be enough, if unmanaged, to destabilise the model possibly to the point of assisting a capsize, especially if the model (not the builder
) is unbalanced to start with (see below).
Next I will add styrene insulators to the right side of the car and re-install the copper 'wipers' hoping this will help keep the car upright, as it is leaning to the right.
If you're hell-bent on making use of only the overhead for power you may want to substitute some form of stiff but "springy" plastic (perhaps a small strip of old credit-card?) for the copper pickups. You'll still need the "pickup" for the current return, but you'll need to balance the upward force from side-to-side generated by the pickups.
I'll take another pic in a couple of days and get it posted here.
Sigh......More to come
I'm looking forward to it, and persevere on the task at hand because it can be solved.
