Excellant Idea I think

  I'm not familiar with a TV lift.  Maybe you could include a picture of it before you snag it off the wall.

TV Lift

http://www.woodtechnology.com/Whisper-Ride-1000

Positioning Accuracy & Repeatability

The lift does look like it has the potential to drive a track elevator, but before causing problems with the CFO I would check out how accurately you can position the lift. Having the position of a TV off by an inch or so is not bad, but you will need to be able to hold vertical track alignment to much less than 1 mm (~0.040”). If you want to do do the positioning automatically you will also have to check out the ability of the control system to reposition the track within the needed accuracy. Attaining the desired accuracy might require additional sensors and controls or mechanical alignment devices on the lift.

Positioning accuracy and repeatability

There is almost no slop in the mechanism and the limit switches are tripped by locked collars on a cable. The TV is within mm of the same position  I also thought that I could spring load the elevator so that it would bump into positive stops just a few mm before the limit switch was triggered. this would give 0 tolerance on elevation. Blayne

It will be....

I think you have a great idea here!

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, or goes up, or uhm...  you get the idea.

Ops with an elevator

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/22237?page=1

This excellent thread is what really set me off and an excellent set of emails back and forth with JimW the original poster egged me on. The mental refinements are below.

Fascinating idea!

Interesting! Having similar space issues I wonder if this would be a common enough problem for a supplier/manufacturer to provide a dedicated solution for model trains.

Shouldn't be too hard with probably mostly off the shelve components..

And when built specifically for the requirements of model trains it might be better suited for all scales.. the precision of other devices like the TV lifter might not work for an N gauge layout.

I wonder if there are manufacturers out there experienced with producing small series of similar devices.. turntables and transfer tables can't be all that different?

Just my 2C,

Frank

The only issue I see with a

The only issue I see with a lift vs a helix is the length of train that can be lifted. A helix will handle any train length that can be powered up it's grade the elevator or if you prefer dehydrated canal lock (AKA by John Armstrong) will be limited to short trains. If your train length is 15 cars that is what could be lifted.

Ro-ro train elevator

Frank,

There is a supplier/manufacturer to provide a dedicated solution for model train.  It is call the ro-ro train elevator.  You can find it at ro-ro.net.

Art 

Ro-ro

I have looked at the Ro-ro several times and if they had a single shelf version I might go with that for my application. As it is currently I am going to do a double switchback to get to my lower staging level.

Tim

Train elevator

There is a new supplier here in the UK of a device called the Nelevator (because it's n scale). I saw iy recently at the National N Gauge Show & have to say it worked extremely well. It was still at the prototype stage and goes into production in early 2016.

Check out the website at http://www.nelevation.com/

John

Hi Art, thanks for the link -

Hi Art,

thanks for the link - I'll have a look!

Frank

Another elevator

http://www.engineeredlayoutsystems.com/home.html

Went ahead and bought one

Well after a lot of thought I realized that the switchback I was going to do took up so much space I would end up with only a couple of storage tracks on my lower level, so I purchased the Ro-Ro train elevator. Got it in yesterday, two boxes priority mail.

I'll be opening the boxes today and I may start a blog on the building of this.

Tim

Lokking forward to your blog

I would really like to hear about your experience with the RoRo train elevator. 

r/

Art

Cool!

I'll be watching with interest!

Remembered this thread

Remembered this thread when in Office Depot / Staples yesterday. The idea of a train table that moves like the television version. This was about 30" deep and 54" long and moves from 30" to 43" as shown. It would be perfect for an On30 rail barge that moves from port to port on different levels. 

​The movement of standing workspaces can work to our advantage!

Ro-Ro

And after all this time I STILL have not built my Ro-ro! LOL!