Very fine Neil!!!

I am impressed!  I like it!!!

Great video too!!!

Nick

metal collector

Looks like you made a car or several perhaps to pick up stray metal partials on your layout. Another thought would be to bury the magnet, but then they would act as uncoupling ramps. Perhaps an electro magnet under the track with a small steel plate on the car. Then you perhaps wouldn't have any "shaky" car movement over the magnet.

Bernd

I wonder how much it would hold.

Neat idea. I might have to try this on my grades. 

Grades and car weights

Thanks Nick! I have always wanted to try a video here. Usually just horses for the misses. 

Bernd - I want to try a few turns around the tube to hold the pin down when it would be in the way. The magnet is pretty small and wouldn’t pick up the “brake” until I made a bigger face to the pin. A nail head might work but I had this stuff handy. 

Thomas - I was thinking of your layout with loaded ore cars. My cars are all over weighted so, even though the gauge is the same as HO and cars similar length, the mass is much greater. I love the feeling of pulling out slack in the couplers and hearing an engine struggle to get up to speed or take a grade. No doubt there is a limit to what the pin will hold without a bigger magnet or larger pin face/surface area. Your rotating brake got me going but I would doubtlessly pull a train against it. 

Neat!

I wonder how a train just rolling over it would react? Would motor magnets affect it?

interesting. but why spot

interesting. but why spot cars on a grade?

maybe a stronger magnet for uncoupling, "gripping" steel axles,wheels, trucks? as in reverse of what you posted.

Very nice

Hi,

this is neat! I especially like the simplicity of the idea.

Have fun!

Loco motors

Rick - I just put my ten wheeler I’ve this and go no reaction! No d-cells on my line so not sure how they would react. Heck they haven’t been been invented yet. 

Why?

Why build a telescope? Why not a spur on a grade? How about doubling a hill and leaving half on a grade or parking the train on the grade while spotting a car?

Packnrat - I tried this more to see if it was viable. Thomas and others have yards and spurs on grades so designing a better mousetrap was too inviting to pass up. My own interest is a spur on a grade with a simulated capstan that would lower cars to be loaded. Not sure how to get there from here but it’s a start. My thought is that a bumper would be fitted with a Kadee coupler on a string. The brake would be set and the bumper would play out some slack at the same time the brake is released via an arduino. This would continue until all the cars were loaded (lime in my case but coal, ore, pellets, etc,) and then the last car would be identified by an ir sensor. At that point all loaded cars might be pulled back to the top to be uncoupled when the switch engine returns. Idk. Maybe an idler car would be better. 

@Darkstar

Thanks. I have a tendency to make things complicated (see previous post). I hope you have some ideas for this!

BTW 3.6% grade!

Here are a couple heavy cars attached to the gon with that little magnet. The smart level said 3.6% and I wasn’t going to tempt fate since I sort of like these cars. Besides On30 prices have gotten out of hand! 

3.6% grade. Wow

Ok, just when I was ready to move onto the next project....

Well done Neil, I will have to make up a test section like yours with some flex track. I need to hold 10 empty ore cars and a caboose. I’ll keep you posted. 

have you considered other approaches?

i've often wondered how a string of hoppers is managed at a coal mine or breaker.  presumably cars are manually repositioned, no need for a loco by setting the empties on a grade beyond the load point.   when a car is loaded, someone(s) loosen the brakes on the cars allowing them to roll down the grade so the next car can be loaded.   (how much of a grade)?

not sure how the magnets work in the approach you describe above with a line attached to the coupler

retarders are used in hump yards.   Maybe something like velcro strips can be used to squeeze (servo) against the inside of the wheels to allow a car to slowly roll into position.   IR sensors used for car position. 

doesn't require attaching a line to the coupler.   loco spots cars, retarder engaged, and loco leaves.

why build telescopes? 

Retarders

Good idea Greg. 

So park the empties on the grade and hold them there. 

After the first car is loaded then release until the next car lines up. 

Repeat until all loaded cars are not on the flat and level - or an it sensor sees nor more cars to load. 

The pin would need to be magnetized to retract or retarders somehow created to pinch the wheels. 

Still pondering this. Gotta be simple. 

For Thomas - holding in your siding

Hi Thomas, Neil and all,

Looking at what Thomas needs after watching some of his Splitrock Mining videos.

I'll bold the important bits. Previously in the Powerbase thread I wrote:

and

and

Applying some refinements and pointing out some potential "Gotcha's"

• A fixed magnet mounted permanently between the rails is probably far from ideal in that it will "grab" the magnetic tails of of your couplings. This could cause train handling problems, breakaways and, in the worst case, wagon "handstands" on short wagons. This is one of the reasons Corrimal does not use Kadee or similar couplings
• It is easier to slide a magnet away perpendicular to the field from another magnet than to pull them apart. Here you can reach the "point of no return" very quickly. You don't have to move a wagon very far away from the between-the-track magnet to "lose it". This works for us when working with parking brakes.   
• Use a servo to raise the parking brake magnet. Leave the magnet raised until the train starts to move as you tow the train away, then drop the magnet. This way you can use a lot smaller servo. See previous dot point.   
• Any magnet under a wagon will be attracted to fixed magnet uncouplers, but probably should not be attracted as much to electromagnetic type uncouplers. Again this could cause train handling problems. 
• Ideally the parking magnet should be far enough away from the uncouplers being used to swap locos, cabooses, etc I'd suggest that the second last wagon could be a more suitable location for the "parking brakes" rather than the end wagon. 

That's probably enough to get the thinking started,

For Neil - some thoughts for playing on grades

Hi Neil, all

Some thoughts from someone who is not playing on the level to another slanted player..

first off the thoughts;

• Design your track so that it has only ONE vertical curve to handle ie the one at the top. Getting this right will be crucial. Get it wrong and you WILL have runaways
• You will be surprised how much length along the grade that this top vertical curve will eat if uncoupling and runaways are to be avoided when using longer length wagons. From hard experience, at any time aim to have at least 1/2 of the coupler head height fully engaged. Here a bigger coupling head works for you. Forget about using "scale" narrow-gauge couplings that are smaller than the ones with come with your wagons, (unless you want to lose more length on your grade). 
• Keep the same grade under your loader to avoid string-lining at the bottom of the grade like this

• See the remarks for Thomas above re the parking brake. You probably can hang a couple of cars out on the grade with a parking brake on the flat at the top of the grade. This gives you enough downward pull to ensure that your winch cable runs out OK when the parking brake is released by lowering the the parking brake magnet.
• Rail does not bend vertically very easily. The vertical curve shown in the photo above is a lot sharper than you will be able to achieve on your grade. But the trick of how we did it is relevant. Remember we only have to support the weight of our models, so significantly structurally weakening the rail is not a problem. With a thin Dremel blade, if you notch the foot and flange of the rail, leaving only the head of the rail complete, then this allows the rail to bend vertically reasonably smoothly if your cuts are close enough together for the vertical curve. For your case I'd recommend cuts about every 1/2" or so. We were down to every 1/4" or so to get the vertical curves shown above. As you go over the top these cuts allow the foot of the rail to be compressed, giving a "smooth" vertical curve at the rail head without kinking the rail.
• Unlike Thomas who can use a loco to move his cars to break the magnetic attraction of the parking brake you will have to use a servo and a direct pull to break the magnetic parking brake when you have your winch cable attached. You may have to go to a bigger servo to do the job depending on the magnets you are using.
• Remember that "point of no return"? If your servo is strong enough to start to pull the magnet away, then the effort to complete the "unpark" becomes rapidly easier for small movements of the servo. You only have to "pull full juice" through the servo for a very short time and distance. This means that you should have less chance of cooking a servo or any decoder controlling it. 
• I'd be rigging 2 wagons with magnets -
  • one that parks over the parking brake with one or two wagons over the grade when the empties are set up to go downhill for loading
  • the second that parks over the parking brake after all loaded wagons are back uphill on the flat after loading
• For fixed length consists, if you have magnets under the wagon then you can use a cheap reed switch near the loader to detect that your last car has been loaded t the loader. You will have to work out just where the reed switch has to be located downhill of the loader. 

   That's probably enough to get you thinking.

Now, as for "hands-off" loading...that's really another topic that ought to kept apart from parking brakes 

John and his magnetic personality

It is really nice to see some of your modeling after listening to  you on Tom Barbalet Model Rail Radio. I’ve heard you describe this operation many times and now we can all see your clever system. 

Thank you for the input and sound advice.  

Lowering cars by capstan

Hi,

that is an interesting quest

The idea with using an idler car (which is attached to a chain) seems to be the most simple approach. If done right, there will not even be a need for a parking brake - though having one might make things even easier.

Without an idler car there will be the need to manually hook the chain to the cut of cars. I think an idler car (basically just a truck with a coupler and some ballast) is a rather good idea. It also adds some visual interest (and takes care of dragging the chain back which might have been a chore for the workers). The idler car might even allow for the animation to be on flat and level track.

The idler car makes it easy to track its position - rather than trying to detect the cut of cars. Use a button on the side of the layout to start the loading sequence once the cut of cars has been positioned.

As for the comment about vertical curves - I agree, it would be easier to keep the animated section flat, even if on a grade.

About loading - I would control the loading with a button or lever on the side of the layout, which means there is little need for automating it. More "play"...

If you want to automate the loading itself, I would aim for detecting the top of the wagon, e.g. with an optical sensor. Activate the loading whenever the sensor is covered by a wagon-top (and the loading sequence is active). That way you don't have to detect the last car or the space between cars.

Have fun!

PS: I'm still looking into animated container loading/unloading on my railroad. For now, the animation is supposed to be manually controlled, however hooking a container in N-Scale is challenging enough

For Thomas

Hi Thomas, all

Yes there are some subtle tricks to making all this work. The aim of the game here is to mark up the grid correctly for someone else if they want "to go play hopscotch on the minefield" of grades.  

The thing to remember about grades - is that when things go wrong, they go wrong very rapidly and very spectacularly.

The steeper the grade the faster and more spectacularly costly it can become if things go wrong. There are at least 5 skips including the Wheely-Bad skip that are now scenic items rather than operational items because of damage caused in runaways. Runaways are to be avoided if possible, especially on 25% grades.  

We've kind of learnt the hard way what might and might not work

Stronger RE magnets and double magnets.

In my search for strong, yet small magnets, I found this information on the web. I liked how Neil used that tiny RE magnet on the screw holding the truck to the car. I will look for N50+ magnets this weekend and do a test against my ore trains on a temporary piece of track/board. Now I just need that grade % application for my phone. 

Glossed over this thread at

Glossed over this thread at first because I've got several projects going on the railroad right now but I just now finally watched the video. Nicely done, succinct and to the point. As someone who has a 4% mostly hidden "necessary grade" on their pike, I find great interest in this. Might be very useful in the future. Thanks!

how to choose the magnets

https://www.kjmagnetics.com/calculator.asp

First test on a test track

Here is my first crude test ( 1.0) of Neil’s magnetic brakes. Single piece of flex track. Hole drilled. ( no copper tube...yet) Steel nail. Simple rare earth magnet, one spare I found. I added this to my see-through test car and used a Micro Mark corner to be the “adhesive”. 

Now add ore cars, which are properly weighted to the NMRA standard of 2.40-2.45 oz. It’s holding eight cars used on the mine runs on a reading of 2.2 on my iPhone level, which matches the grade on my mine spur. 

I will do more tests with stronger magnets and different types of nails. But it seems like an ingenious idea for locating handbrakes. 

For Neil - the problem with "barney cars"

Hi Neil, all

Now that the idea of a barney car or idler car attached to the rope has surfaced -

The real problems with using one of these are that:

• you have to get rid of it if it is on the uphill side of the cut of cars to be able to haul your cars away after they have made it back up to the top of your incline. Managing the barney car and how you can move it when it is off the uphill end of the cars is not intuitively easy. Also how you move it from where it is "stored"  back on to your cut of cars on the flat at the top of the hill also needs to be thought through.   
• if its on the downhill side of the cut and you come off the grade at the bottom, the haulage line WILL stringline (see my previous photo of the chain in this thread last page) under your cars. This can derail the cars. In the real world, steel cable is heavy enough and the vertical curves are long and gradual enough to hold the haulage line on the ground, safely away from car underframes axles etc    You cannot hold the rope down and have it operational at the same time. The holder-downers get in the way. This was one of the reasons why we went with the magnetic chain approach on the Corrimal Incline. There were some other reasons as well, but the stringlining at the bottom of the grade was one of the biggest, if not the biggest "why-not". This was the reason I suggested that you keep your loader on the grade.  

If you want to have a look at how one way a barney car actually works can I suggest that you have a close look at the Mahony Plane There are several photos that show narrow gauge tracks between the rails and the "sink pits" (my term) for the barney car that gets the barney car out of the way of the standard gauge locomotives at each end of the run.