Restoring an antique HO Series 0 - but with scale traction motors

[BeardedBeauty]

hey all. I'm not so familiar with this site as I am not on here so often, but I have been working on something for the past 6 months I would like to share.

 

I got lucky one day in fall of 2016, and found the original 12 car 0 Series Shinkansen set on eBay. I bought it, and immediately found that the original motors drew too much amperage. 6 cars out of the 12 were powered.

 

after brainstorming for a couple weeks, instead of solving this with a different power pack/transformer, I wanted to go the hard route and came up with the idea of traction motors - if it works on the real thing, why not in HO scale? There are phone vibrator motors that I could use that would fit between the axles perfectly

 

the result of my endeavors is shown in this youtube video: (test car in vid is type 21, I don't have the other cars ready yet)

 

 

I have a long way to go to get the full train running, but longer I wait to see it on the rails, the more focused I am to get it done.

the train set, when finished, will have working head/tail lights, bluetooth control, and various other devices built in to keep the train running. This is all powered with an Arduino Micro.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2017 by BeardedBeauty

[kvp]

Looks really cool and the bogies look like 3D printed parts. They also look much more sturdy and prototypical than the fiddly Kato N scale low floor tram power bogies that also use phone motors. Please share more info about your design as multiple power bogies and radio control usually mean a distributed traction system with multiple motor drivers and require a full length train control bus with some kind of power and control connectors between cars.

[BeardedBeauty]

yeah actually good guess, the truck frames are 3D printed. Shapeways has some really good stuff!

 

basically, the Arduino micro is the brain in the train. it is powered form a rectifier into a 5v regulator, this way it will have constant power whether it's on DC or DCC. the arduino gives commands to a motor driver, to which each truck is individually controlled. right now I just have a program that goes forwards and backwards uploaded to it, but that will change as soon as I research wireless communication enough

 

as for power and communication, I have given it thought, but I cannot really come up with a solid solution. every idea I have involves either multiple bluetooth (wireless) modules, or one bluetooth module with like what you said, a bus cable between cars.

I'll probably end up using a combination of the two, with two bluetooth wireless modules and bus cables, splitting the 12 car set into two "units", but Im not sure yet really.

 

If anyone has ideas on what I can do as far as a "multiple unit" design, I think I need to power 6 out of the 12 cars. Suggestions are welcome.

Edited April 14, 2017 by BeardedBeauty

[Kiha66]

While it sounds like you have other ideas, if you went DCC you could install kato EM13 motor decoder in each power cars, and then just program them all to the same address. were you planing on the train drawing from track power, or an on board battery?

[kvp]

If anyone has ideas on what I can do as far as a "multiple unit" design, I think I need to power 6 out of the 12 cars. Suggestions are welcome.

Actually i would say having a single control unit in one of the cab cars and controlling the train from there seems more prototypical. If you are battery powered, you'll need a power bus, but if you are using rectified track power, then you could take track power at each motor car. For control, you can use a simple 2 wire broadcast bus sending out the pwm signal (and two others for the lights) or a digital packet based bus (like I2C, CAN or SUSI) if you want fine lighting control and other extras. This would allow you to have a bluetooth module or a DCC decoder in the controlling car. (or a dual mode arduino supporting both) Btw. if you are track powered, i would just just connect all pickups into a common power bus and add some buffering to the arduino (after the rectifier) as its recovery time after a power failiure is not the best. This would mean a 2 cable power bus and 3 or 4 signal wires for control. Fortunately 6 pin power couplers are available in H0 scale.

 

One more thing: Dont't split the control as radio noise could get the two receivers out of synch and that could damage the train. I've had a similar problem with 0 scale Lego trains running from multiple bluetooth receivers /sbricks/ and the front power head getting a stop command while the back didn't, resulting in a quick pileup. The solution was to use a single receiver and the motor bogies were run from the 4 wire PF bus used by current Lego trains.

[cteno4]

beard,

 

great project! for some reason the video is giving not available message for me.

 

thanks

 

jeff

[BeardedBeauty]

Dont't split the control as radio noise could get the two receivers out of synch and that could damage the train

 

ok. good call. I didnt know this - I was half planning on using two bluetooth things and just connecting them to a smartphone.

but yes, it is track powered. I'm not a fan of dealing with batteries, seems like too many variables when it comes to charge life. I think I will have like you said before, a bus that travels throughout the train delivering power.

 

---

 

Thanks for your interest, jeff! here's a real link:

 

 

 

John

Edited April 21, 2017 by BeardedBeauty
youtube embed

[marknewton]

That's an interesting project you've started, John. Who made the original models?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[BeardedBeauty]

That's an interesting project you've started, John. Who made the original models?

Company named Katsumi (or KTM). I've looked them up, they're still around. They make really nice brass models now I guess

 

John

Edited April 16, 2017 by BeardedBeauty

[medusa]

Too sad this will not work in N. :D

[marknewton]

You're right John, KTM are still in business.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Jcarlton]

KTM sells very nice models for a very nice price:http://www.ktm-models.co.jp/
 

[VentureForth]

If anyone else wants to get in on this:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rame-Shinkansen-serie-300-JR-complete-12-elements-echelle-HO-KTM-laiton-/222524308557?hash=item33cf7b7c4d:g:xIcAAOSw9GhYZAsh

 

Yours for only €2,000...

[Jcarlton]

If anyone else wants to get in on this:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rame-Shinkansen-serie-300-JR-complete-12-elements-echelle-HO-KTM-laiton-/222524308557?hash=item33cf7b7c4d:g:xIcAAOSw9GhYZAsh

 

Yours for only €2,000...

That's not a bad price at all for that train.  I paid $500 for my 0 set and it's 1960's vintage.  I'm looking at this project closely though when I do it I may use a slightly different approach.

[BeardedBeauty]

Update on this 0 project, friends: I've had issues continuing this only because I'm really busy, but I still want to complete this. the whole set. I have completed bluetooth communication between the train and phone. works perfect, cant believe I actually got it to run. I gave it two speeds and stop, the train responds to sending it the digits 0, 1, or 2. This will change in the future, I'm hoping to give it more of a variable speed-transformer kinda deal on the phone when finished. I still only have the cab car running right now (the type 21).

 

the other thing I found was that the motors, even though I gave the thing four of them, get 'tired' and become slow after running it for a bit. I am unsure if this is because of the quality of the motors, I'm more inclined to believe it has more to do with the gear ratio not being large enough for the motors to handle. the issue is that I printed the gears the smallest I could without giving up the material's integrity, I would create a different ratio if it was easy for me or doable..

 

I welcome suggestions if anyone has any.

 

John

[kvp]

One thing that could warm up the motors is on-off pwm. A better solution is chopped pwm, where one side is always on and the other gets chopped between on and tristate. A free running diode is also required for each direction, but many drive chips have them built in.

 

The other thing is voltage. What is the maximal voltage of the motors and the actual voltage the pwm drive signal is generated at? What is the rated power and maximal power of the motors? How does this compare to the power of the original motor(s)?

[BeardedBeauty]

oh man. I'm glad you're here, kvp. I forgot that the Arduino uses PWM. I set the output of the transformer inside the unit to a solid 5.5v so that it is safe for the Arduino mini to handle. but what I didnt think about is that the motors are rated at 4.5v. I have the power to the motors going through a small driver, but the signal for speed is still coming in as pwm. so even though I thought I was keeping the speed low enough, the 5.5v pwm could still be killing the motors.

 

that's brilliant. I would never have thought of that.