Rock and Roll - Fast Tracks Tilt Table.
I have been looking for this video clip for some time and it finally surfaced! When this was in use there weren't too many digital video cameras around, so very little video of it operating exists. Back in 2006, in preparation for the National Train Show in Philadelphia, we wanted to build a unique item to demonstrate trackwork built with our tools.
What I envisioned was a small shelf layout that would rock up and down, a free rolling box car would simply roll through the trackwork on the table as it raised up and down.
The concept was simple enough, but the reality was something different! It turned out to be a very difficult piece to build. The mechanics underneath are a marvel to behold, Russ (my brother) built the mechanical part of the display using a power window motor. He also constructed the base from 2" foam so it would be light enough to move around. A series of timers and microswitches were installed to drive the motor and the four Tortoise switch machines powering the turnouts. Programming those timers was incredibly difficult. Simple as it seams, the logic needed was almost enough to stump Ron (my other brother). After a few days of struggle he did get it figured out (it was WAY beyond my comprehension) and the table performed flawlessly.
To stop the rolling car from shooting off the end of the table, small brushes were mounted under the roadbed. When the table tilted down, the brushes would pop up between the rails just high enough to rub on the bottom of the car axles, causing to to come to a complete stop. These brushes can be seen up close further into the video. This worked incredibly well, and stopped the car smoothly every time.
During the three days of the train show it ran non stop, flawlessly. For 50,000 cycles that boxcar rolled through the double crossover without a single derailment. The four turnouts in the double crossover were all switched back and forth 50,000 times without any issues, pretty much proving that a properly soldered switch point on a PC board is very reliable.
It is absolutely mesmerizing to watch, and during the 3 days of the Philadelphia NMRA Train Show in 2006 and the Detroit NMRA Train Show in 2007 several thousand people were introduced to our products while completely hypnotized and unaware of our whispering in their ear they had lots of room left on their credit cards....
The display has since been retired.
Tim Warris - Fast Tracks
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Very neat idea!
I'd love to borrow the idea to demonstrate Proto:87 Wheels running reliably!
Is your "cycle" the 40 seconds it take for the box car to return to the start point and begin again?
Andy
Rock & Roll is right!
Very groovy display idea and well executed!
I like how the grasses near the track are similar to the brushes that stick up to stop the cars.
I did get a little seasick watching things roll baaaaack and forth, baaaaack and forth.
Very much pity the dude up in the tower!
--M.C. Fujiwara
Yardgoat Layout Design
My YouTube Channel (How-To's, Layout progress videos)
Silicon Valley Free-moN
Very Cool!
That's a great demo table Tim, and what a testament to the reliability of Fast Tracks track work!
I can imagine it was quite a feat to build and synchronize everything.
At first I was wondering how the heck the car was coming to a nice controlled stop. Then I saw the brushes. You guys are the bomb!
Thanks for sharing the video, very neat!
Man you gotta love Fast Tracks!
~Kevin
Appreciating Modeling In All Scales!
I remember ...
I remember seeing this quite a while back. I cannot recall when or where, but it was a video and I watched at home online. Maybe while viewing a review of the 2006 or 2007 shows ??
Bill D.
N Scale (1:160), not N Gauge. DC (analog), Stapleton PWM Throttle.
Proto-freelance Southwest U.S. 2nd half 20th Century.
Keep on trackin'
Fixing the braking brushes to the base frame was brilliant
No moving parts or mechanism to worry about controlling. Love it!
Andy
Ingenious, clever
Ingenious, clever
That's five 9's
50000 rolls through the trackwork without a single derailment is 99.999% reliability - five 9s. That's considered absolutely excellent. Amazon, for example, only guarantees an uptime of 99.8% - which means over 100 hours of downtime in a year.
It would be interesting to do the same test on some commercial turnouts to see how long they would go without a derailment. If you got 10 derailments in the same period of time, that would be 99.99% reliability.
Joe Fugate
Publisher, Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine
Wouldn't that be 100%?
50,000 cycles with out any derailments would be 100% wouldn't it?....
While the cars and turnouts operated flawlessly, we did have some issues with the micro switch settings. They were quite fiddly to get set correct, and sometimes the table would go a bit hysterical. After the Detroit show we decided to retire it instead of re-working it as it would have been another bit project to get it fixed.
Very Neat.
I love the automated table. What I find even better though is the amount of detail that went into finishing the module. You could have stopped at just the track work and the technical bits, but instead went on to create a nice scene complete with buildings, vehicles and a crossing tower. Outstanding work as usual.
Shane T.
Everything works 100% until it breaks. . . :)
It's that "lies, damned lies and statistics" thing.. . . . .so you have to be careful to double check your math and be very clear and sure about what you say you claim.
"During the three days of the train show it ran non stop, flawlessly. For 50,000 cycles that boxcar rolled through the double crossover without a single derailment. The four turnouts in the double crossover were all switched back and forth 50,000 times without any issues, pretty much proving that a properly soldered switch point on a PC board is very reliable".
For instance, the cycle of the box car going through all four turnouts, flipping each turnout just once, takes 40 seconds on the video..
To do that 50,000 times, actually would take nearly 3 weeks, running 24 hours a day, not three days. So presumably the test was run that long before you took it to the show.
Andy