Construction of the station building part IV

Two garden LED lights that have been in service in my garden the last year will become the interior lights for the building. The upper part of the light fixtures themselves will be used as they hold the solar panel. They will be placed on top of the building to collect sunlight.
After opening the light fixture it is clear that it used a 1,2 V 40 mAh battery. The power switches were rusty (but these are actually quit obsolete as I never used those) and will be removed. Considering the rusty state of the battery cells it will be a good idea to replace those with reachable AA or AAA cells.

The wires from the solar panel to the circuit board will be lengthened. As mentioned above the fixtures with panel will be placed on top of the building (disguised as chimneys) and the longer wires run to the circuit boards that will be placed in the building, together with the new batteries, in a way it is easy to access for repair or maintenance.

Opening the light fixture

The battery shows it is a 1,2 V cell. It will be replaced by a 1,2 AA or AAA size cell

Old cell removed. New one shall be connected with wires to B+ and B-
The solar panel will be connected to S+ and S- (here still connected to red and black wire).
The white wires went to the obsolete switch and are now connected together, without the switch.

Lengthened wires connected.

The LED light fixtures are than placed on the roof using hotglue. I added an extra layer of hotglue on the 'chimney's to give more grip if I make the chimney of of cement or Milliput (see later on).

 

I carved the foam to give the cement more grip on the surface.

Roof tile pattern was 'sculpted using an old screwdriver. There is not only a pattern but also some relief in it. 

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RC control using the RailBoss Plus

Some while ago I dug up my trailer car with build-in RC unit and battery pack. It was still in one of the moving boxes after moving to this house more than 2 years ago.

The trailer car was constructed in 2011 using a ToyTrain freight car. The idea was to use the car to power and control my LGB locomotives. This way I did not have to convert the locomotives to battery power themselves. The locomotives can still be used for track power as I did not remove the sliding contacts and the contacts on the wheels. The locomotives can be powered and RC controlled using the plugs that are often used to power the coach interior lights

The RC controller is the RailBoss Plus controller from G-Scale Graphics (I just notice on their website it is no longer available as it is replaced by the newer RailBoss 4 unit). The transmitter and receiver are a 4 channel 2,4 Ghz set bought at HobbyKing. The battery is a 12 volts 2300 mAh battery pack (in this case from Conrad).
The battery can be charged by plugging a charging device in to the charging jack at the underside of the car. A little cable from the head side of the car connects it to the locomotive.
All electronics where nicely hidden out of side behind a plywood partition. So when the doors of the car are opened you can not notice the electronics. A switch in the partition could switch it off (to charging position) or on (to RC operation). The switch was easily accessible through the car sliding door.

Here is a little video on it from 2011:

Testing

The first thing that had to be replaced was the battery pack. Perhaps I had overcharged it after all those years but the fact was there was no power in it what so ever and it turned brownish at some spots... So a new battery was placed.
The second part that need replacement was the connector cable towards the locomotives. Back in 2011 I had chosen to use a little connector for aesthetic reasons. But I soon found out that these little connectors are not very sturdy and came loose after connecting and de-connecting locomotives several times. Also I had to construct an adapter cable from the LGB locomotive outlets to the mini connector. So now I made a simpler cable using standard hobby plugs that connect easily with the LGB plugs and sockets in (most) LGB locomotives. I had to construct 1 adapter cable to one of my Stainz locomotives as this model was issued with a different type of connector factory-wise.

So here it is now:

And here it goes:

July 25th 2019

And here is a little video of the running session:

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Solar powered railcar Part V

Some progress on the electrics. It is not my most favorite part as I lack the knowledge of it. It is trail and error for me.

As planned I connected the motor directly to the battery and added a small switch to turn the motor on and off. Due to the fact I misunderstood some good advise of a railway modeller on the Garden Railway Forum I had placed a diode (wrongly!) between the battery and the motor to avoid unwanted discharge of the battery. However this was a complete useless thing to do. The diode had no function on that spot at all... it only let the voltage drop with 0,7 volts, causing too low voltage to run.

The diode had actually made more sense between the panel and the battery cell ifI had chosen to charge the cell directly from the panel (which I did not as I let it charge using the connection on the board). When charged directly from the panel it is also better to use a Schottky diode instead of the BY diode I used as the Schottky has a way lower voltage drop (0,2 volts). Trail and error!
 
A 1,5 volts 2500 mAh battery cell is used (the original cell that came with the set was 600 mAh). Hopefully this will extend running time (but also will extend charging time). If not, or when charging takes way too long or don't charge at all, I will replace it with the 600 mAh again.Although I found the LED a bit too blue-isch I used it as headlight because, well... I had it.
Perhaps a bit of coloring will get a more warmer color and if not it can be replaced after all.

Overview; be aware: the green diode is REMOVED (see text)

LED in place

Switch for the LED glued in place. The motor switch will be next to it.

Overview on how the parts fit together

Charging up in the first June sun

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Solar powered railcar Part II

The motor

The Sol Expert kit was pretty straightforward to build. The instructions are simple and clear. You can choose between several gear ratios. The kit comes with a little wooden template to adjust the motor gear in different position depending on what ratio you choose.

The axle that came with the kit was a bit to thin for the LGB wheels I wanted to use so I made a spacer from a piece of  styrene tube. It works but I am not totally satisfied because one wheel has still a bit slack. Perhaps I will replace it in the future with a brass spacer. But for now it is good enough.

And the end result; motor, axle and wheels all in place and looking just fine.
Now I really need to figure out how to make a simple chassis...

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Solar powered railcar Part I

The original plan

Due to a few Youtube videos of solar powered garden trains I became fascinated by this idea and started an experimental solar powered model rail vehicle. After some (not to successful) searching on the internet for information on similar projects I realize I had to figure it out myself as much as I could. Because I am not very skilled in electronics I decided to buy on Conrad a “Solarhouse” and a motor with gearbox. Both kits are from Sol Expert (#40212 “Solarhaus” kit and #90015 “Universal getriebe”). See pictures below.

The house kit was bought because it has some electronic unit in it that charges the battery (or at least, that was what I thought it was, just keep reading...). 
This kind of electronic unit is certainly also present in most cheap LED garden lights of course, but mostly the electronic components in these have no visible codes or markings on it. As I want to examine what components can be used for making a similar unit myself, I wanted something with these codes still visible. I noticed this was the case on the Sol Expert kit.  
The kit itself is very straightforward (luckily); with a switch you can turn the LED on and off. I figured that I could replace the LED for the motor which will make the wheels spin and that would be it for me (I like things simple). No RC control desired at this moment, just want to let it work for now. The Sol Expert 0,6 – 6 volts motor is designed to run on the solar charged 1,2 volts battery. If I keep the model as light as possible, it will work (I hoped).

The second plan (after some wise advise)

Fortunately I received some very helpful advise on the Garden Railway Forum that made me understood the electronics a bit more. There is NO special charger unit in it as I had guessed. The solar panel just charges the NiMH battery. The two components are a LED driver that shuts off the LED when the voltage drops below a certain point, and an inductor.
The advise was to run the motor straight off the battery and not to replace the LED with the motor hence the chip has some current limiting function.
So, the plan is now to keep the electronic unit as it is (it will be a headlight for the railcar) and connect the motor directly to the battery together with an on/off switch. See the drawing schedule below.

Next, figuring out how I build it on some sort of base or chassis and what it would look like...
To be continued!

Sol Expert Solar House electronics #40212

Sol Expert #90015 Gearbox and motor

LED driver

Inductor

The first setup

It works!

The plan...

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Mercedes 170 railcar

This Mercedes draisine is build using an Airfix 1:24 scale plastic modelkit (#6413).
The model is battery powered with an electromotor and RC unit from a cheap RC toycar.











The base of the car is formed by the chassis of the RC car. The rear wheels of the RC car where removed from the motor driven rear axle and replace by metal train wheels that came from Liliput #999300 replacement wheels/axle set.

The donor for RC and motor

The chassis was modified with plastic strips to suport the front axle

At the front section of the RC car chassis the steering mechanism was removed and some plastic strips were used to make a support for the front axle. The car was to light weighted and derailed with the front wheels almost constantly. So a bit of weight was placed in front to give it downward pressure preventing it to derail.

The weight in front

Rear wheels fitted perfectly to track width

When all the work on the chassis was done the body was test fitted, followed by some test runs on the layout.

Testfitting the body on the chassis

Low-rider!

Next step was to fill up the hole for the spare wheel at the back. I placed a round piece of styrene in it covered with a layer of Milliput that was than sanded with fine sandpaper to match the contour of the tailgate. Also a driver was installed. The driver came from a 1:24 scale driver figure set from Fujimi (Fujimi 11040) and fitted very nicely.

Bodywork...

This video shows a testrun on my old layout.  

The car was sprayed in a green livery. Warm white LED's where placed in the kits headlights by sanding of the backside of the headlights and  using the wires as supports. At the rear a red signal light was placed, using a red LED.

The end result was a very nice little car that was running actual very smoothly on the old layout where it had to climb reasonable slopes as well. I am not sure if there was in fact a Mercedes 170 serving a railway somewhere in the world but it would not be strange as many (perhaps redundant or outdated) vehicles were used to rebuild into railcars used as low-cost vehicles for inspection or other goals. But I think it catches the looks ans appearance of such rail vehicles nicely (like the 1937 Ford V8 railcar at the DSB museum in Odense, Denmark).

Pictures of the railcar on the layout (edit April 6 2019)

Construction of Railcar Nr 1

Railcar 1 is the first railcar I have build for my garden railroad. The picture is taken on my old layout "Chemin de fer Juruth".

It does not have a specific prototype but was freely scratch build to resemble a French like narrow gauge railcar. It was a learning process by itself.

 

The construction was pretty straight forward. It is mostly build from white styrene sheets.

The chassis was build up arround an LGB motorblock. On the chassis the battery, receiver and controller are placed.

The railcar is radio controlled (RC) as I don't power and control train through the tracks what is more conventional.

My experience is that track power on outdoor railroads always brings connection problems after time. RC ensures a more reliable operating of the trains.

Later on the build I replaced the receiver and speed controller for a complete RC unit I retrieved from an old cheap RC toycar. This way I also can use the transmitter of the RC car to control the railcar. The RC unit was flat enough to build inside the roof of the railcar. It will stick out of the roof a bit but that will be 'camouflaged' with the luggage rack on top of the railcar.

The use of these RC units from toys is actually a very easy and cheap way to supply trains with RC. Some of these units also power lights or sounds that can be used in the trains.

So it give some nice low-cost opportunities and it is nice to experiment with it.

However it has its downsides also. The range of the receiver and transmitter are mostly much smaller than the more 'proffesional'  sets that are used in RC modelling. On larger railroads this could mean you have to follow the train to keep it running.
Also, these toy RC units are very sensitive to interference. This will influence the operation of the train.

An other problem is when the unit is broken you can not easily fix it. You have to replace the complete unit for a similar one.
To be honest, it is a cheap and easy solution but I regret it I did not used the conventional speed controller and receiver. I am planning to replace it in the future.

The luggage rack was made from polystyrene as well. The roof is hollow and constructed with parts of balsa wood. The bottom of the luggage rack is polystyrene with carved in planks. On top luggage is placed to cover up the highest part of the RC unit.
The luggage is made out of little crates and boxes from 1:35 scale military kits combined with luggage and chickens sculpted from Fimo or Milliput.A railing was later made from pieces of metal and styrene.

 The front is made from a piece of mosquito bait.

The whole car was than sprayed with primer and paint in the light beige/red scheme. Details where later painted on.