Faller Car System - running Japanese buses

[gavino200]

Please excuse me if this has been posted before. I found nothing when I searched it. 

 

I found this while browsing the net. It's called the Faller Car system. It works with a little wire that you embed in the road as a guide. Seems a bit more versatile and less fake looking than the Tomix/Tomytex bus system. 

 

 

[Kiha66]

Forget the buses, I want that working monorail!

[cteno4]

Gavin,

 

faller car system is what tomytec liscensed for its bus system. Tomytec buses can run on faller systems, all the same design. Tomytec has just added a better sensor system to change gears and start stop. The faller system just has start stop that’s controlled by a strong electromagnet that trips a reed switch in the bus. Tomytec busses have all the start/stop and gear changing handled by a microprocessor that is triggered by small permanent (although you can use electromagnets to control when things are fired) and Hall effect sesonrs in the bus.

 

you can run your own wires to do Tomytec busses, you just need a very iron based wire that the steering magnets can interact with well. The Tomytec busses ask have a stronger steering magnet than the faller units do.

 

jeff

Edited February 8, 2018 by cteno4

[kvp]

Fun info: The faller stop magnets could signal tomytec buses too, but you'll need a polarity changed DC drive to do so. This is the same as for turnouts and signals. The tomytec bus stop also works for faller vehicles, just remove the optional speed and stop condition magets before and after the movable stop magnet.

[cteno4]

I doubt the Tomytec magnets would trip the reed switches in the old faller busses,. Have you made them work or seen folks using the Tomytec magnets to trip the faller bus reed switches. Also a permanent magnet like the Tomytec if it did trip the faller reed switch would just keep the bus stopped. The old faller busses are dumb, just on/off reed switch and why they used the electro magnet you turned on to trip the reed switch and turn the bus off, then turn off the electromagnet to turn the bus back on.

 

also I’ve nit tried it yet, but I kind of doubt the faller busses will work well on Tomytec roads as the steering  magnet on the old faller busses is a lot weaker than the Tomytec ones.

 

jeff

Edited February 8, 2018 by cteno4

[kvp]

41 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

I doubt the Tomytec magnets would trip the reed switches in the old faller busses,. Have you made them work or seen folks using the Tomytec magnets to trip the faller bus reed switches. Also a permanent magnet like the Tomytec if it did trip the faller reed switch would just keep the bus stopped. The old faller busses are dumb, just on/off reed switch and why they used the electro magnet you turned on to trip the reed switch and turn the bus off, then turn off the electromagnet to turn the bus back on.

 

also I’ve nit tried it yet, but I kind of doubt the faller busses will work well on Tomytec roads as the steering  magnet on the old faller busses is a lot weaker than the Tomytec ones.

 

jeff

A fellow club member mixes both tomytec and faller vehicles. He only has the newer faller ones with the rechargable metal can batteries. They work and if you only use the tomytec bus stop and unconditional stop sections (no speed control), then both types behave the same. The trick is that the tomytec magnet is mechanically moved to set or clear the stop signal. This is the same as turning an electromagnet on and off.

[cteno4]

Forgot Tomytec had the mechanical move the magnet stop. Hmm maybe the newer faller have a sensor as my older faller buss with the reed switch did not respond when I tried some smaller rare earth magnets (look to be around the size the Tomytec ones are but it was a few years ago since I played with my faller) and it didn’t respond to them. I was hoping to do a smaller mechanical stop as the faller electromagnet ain’t small.

 

does he run on Tomytec streets? Was wondering if the faller steering magnets were strong enough to follow the wire in the Tomytec streets. My older faller bus has a weaker steering magnet than the Tomytec does. I have not bought any Tomytec bus street yet just a couple of busses to play with.

 

my faller is the old ones with Uber simple circuit and the plain old nicad cylinder.

 

jeff

[kvp]

The tomytec wire runs in a groove, so it's not that deep. However the fallers do have more dewirements, especially on turnouts. The sensor is just a grain of rice reed switch. The tomytec magnets work, but only when the vehicle is completly parallel to the wire. I've only seen faller trucks, not buses as all bus mechs i've seen running were tomytecs with 3D printed shells.

[gavino200]

16 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

Forget the buses, I want that working monorail!

 

I agree. I might try to do some detective work.

[cteno4]

Few threads on the forum on a chap that’s built an n scale working monorail mech that can be used with the fujimi kits possibly. He also put up the how tos and design on his site. Lots of it can be potentially 3d printed as well instead of a lot of machining.

 

simplest is a rubber roller mech on the top of the monorail for traction. The use batteries in train and dc to control speed instead of trying to rig conducting surfaces/rails to the monorail for power and control. It’s a fiddle project. Good thing is the rail are fairly wide radius so easier to deal with binding around curves. Bad thing is it’s a fat loop.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

3 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Few threads on the forum on a chap that’s built an n scale working monorail mech that can be used with the fujimi kits possibly. He also put up the how tos and design on his site. Lots of it can be potentially 3d printed as well instead of a lot of machining.

 

simplest is a rubber roller mech on the top of the monorail for traction. The use batteries in train and dc to control speed instead of trying to rig conducting surfaces/rails to the monorail for power and control. It’s a fiddle project. Good thing is the rail are fairly wide radius so easier to deal with binding around curves. Bad thing is it’s a fat loop.

 

jeff

 

Yes, I emailed Bob. He replied with some videos of the monorail. He's done a very nice job. The mechanism fantastic and runs very smoothly. I wasn't thrilled with the detail of the actual Disney tram though. I might email him again and ask him if he'd be interested in trying to automate the new Haneda airport monorail that recently popped up on Hobbysearch.

[gavino200]

It seems the Monorail in the YouTube video is a home creation. They're ingeniously modeled and constructed. But they move to fast and sound horrible.

 

 

 

 

 

[cteno4]

He had played with one of the greenmax or fujimi monorails someone had given him and came up with a slimmer mech. It was a very simple and clean drive mech as seems the best approach overall. Nice chap, took  he some time off there from working on this stuff.

 

Yes the Disney monorail model was not all that detailed and he just better moorized it. I think there was some talk of 3d printing better ones, but I expect would hunt them down like dogs and melt any made or extract a first born to keep it...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[gavino200]

6 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

He had played with one of the greenmax or fujimi monorails someone had given him and came up with a slimmer mech. It was a very simple and clean drive mech as seems the best approach overall. Nice chap, took  he some time off there from working on this stuff.

 

Yes the Disney monorail model was not all that detailed and he just better moorized it. I think there was some talk of 3d printing better ones, but I expect would hunt them down like dogs and melt any made or extract a first born to keep it...

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

Hmm, yeah I bet Disney would have a team scouring the web for copyright infringements on a daily basis. It's probably not worth Bob's time to do a conversion if he can't reproduce it. And he can't do that if he can't market it. Still....no harm in asking. About the Haneda monorail that is.

 

Perhaps if there were a few of us here interested he could make a batch.

 

This is his mechanism btw

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Yeah when the first Japanese rr models came out I contacted him as it seemed like a great market for his mechanism with widely produced model and a potnential large Japanese market! No Disney as well!

 

someone got him I think greenmax model to play with, but it was shortly after he took a hiatus from the monorail modeling.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

Edited February 9, 2018 by cteno4

[gavino200]

3 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Yeah when the first Japanese rr models came out I contacted him as it seemed like a great market for his mechanism with widely produced model and a potnential large Japanese market! No Disney as well!

 

someone got him I think greenmax model to play with, but it was shortly after he took a hiatus from the monorail modeling.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

Per his email a few months ago he was planning on getting back into it in February. That's now that is ;)

[inobu]

I didn't know how simple they made the road

 

 https://www.walthers.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/750x350/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/0/2/02720000162131_big.jpg

 

You can run that easy on a laser machine. I gotta see this for myself.

 

Inobu

 

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by cteno4

[inobu]

 

mono rail

whats the train 2:56

Edited February 9, 2018 by inobu

[kvp]

1 hour ago, inobu said:

I didn't know how simple they made the road

That flex piece has very bad stability and depends on the surfacing material to hold the cars. It could get bumpy fast.

 

The usual way is to cut a groove, lay the wire and paste it, then paint it. An easier way is to glue the wire under thin styrene or stronger paper sheets and just paint the surface.

 

Faller road and concrete paint is great as it has fine dust in it that gives a nice texture and helps with grip. I use them on other surfaces too.

[Gryphr]

9 minutes ago, inobu said:

whats the train 22:56

 

Seconds?
The first train on the bridge running left to right is a E257-0 series, the one running right to left afterwards is a JR West 221 series.

[kvp]

15 minutes ago, inobu said:

whats the train 2:56

I think that's a Super View Odoriko...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoriko#Super_View_Odoriko

[Swd]

How close to the surface does the wire need to be? I'm thinking of routing a groove in some Sintra and making roads for the Tomytec busses. And where can I get the proper type of wire?

 

Thanks

Joe

[kvp]

2 hours ago, Swd said:

How close to the surface does the wire need to be? I'm thinking of routing a groove in some Sintra and making roads for the Tomytec busses. And where can I get the proper type of wire?

How close? I would say pretty close, but 0.3 to 1 mm sould work. When i needed some wire, i went to a hobby craft shop and bought a spool of lack paint coated steel wire. (it doesn't rust and easy to glue) They also had some nice round magnets that are roughly the same size as in the Tomytec kits and were sold as jewelry magnets (they are also great for mounting stuff to fridges). I've bought a few and they work great under the road pieces and they could be sunk into wood or foam easily. One thing i did try was some leftover self adhesive street paper roll and just cut a groove into a board with a hobby knife, put the wire in it and put the street paper on top. The only hard part was to get the rigid wire to bend into the shape of the track. I just made an S turn for testing as the printed paper road was ugly.

[cteno4]

I’ve run the faller bus with a weaker steering magnet than Tomytec with the wire running under thin chipboard and 020” styrene sheet. I did a lot of experimenting on paths and such the bus could navigate by taping the wire under the sheet then turning it over to run the bus. Easy way to play when free forming a path. You can make interesting corner swings to make it look a bit more realistic this way on hard street corners, but you need to think thru clearances of other paths doing this.

 

I was thinking of just getting my path down on 010 or 020 styrene like this then once happy gluing the wire in place the adding another pieces of like 040 styrene or chipboard to fill in the rest of the void area around the wire and flip it all over and set in place. Advantage is you can test it all out and be happy with it before locking it all down and you have a consistent depth. Making the notched path in your street as KVP mentions can be hard, especially with curves and then filling them with putty (the way the faller system kit has you do and even gives you putty!) can be messy (I looked at folks doing plaster roads and cutting wire grooves and embedding the wire and it was not a pretty task and lots of @#$& from folks). You also need to be careful to only go a consistent depth with the wire, especially in curves as small dips could make the steering magmet loose track of the wire. Plus I like the idea of being able to paint and detail the street off the layout as trying to put down road lines and such while bent way over the layout in harder to reach areas is a royal pain. Also if something goes wrong you could engineer road pieces to come up. It’s sort of like making your own custom Tomytec roadway pieces.

 

I like this as it’s changeable if you need some redevelopment in your layout neighborhood or have problems. Also let’s you play a lot before locking your path down and requires no really detailed skills as you don’t have to cut perfect paths and such. Could even be used for a very wavy street going up a hill and just not put the shim layer, just the top layer with the wire glued under it. Then you can shim to place carefully so the dips and transitions all work well for the bus before you lock it down.

 

Could sort of flip this idea over as well and just lay out the wire path on a bed of like 040 styrene with tape. Check the path by putting a thin piece of chipboard over it all to debug. Then once settled glue wire to the styrene bed. Then fill in the voids aroudnthe wire with thin chipboard or styrenethats just the height of the wire. Then you can top with printed roadways on cardstock or paper. Of course you would need to lay out your street pattern on the base sheet first then line up your top.

 

if you go looking for wire take a small rare earth magnet with you and make sure it grips really well to the wire. Lots of wires out there are alloys that are not so affected by magnetic fields. A some folks have had to teyna couple of wires until they have one that works as well as the faller or Tomytec wire.

 

lots of choices for rare earth magnets around on ebay if you can find them locally. Very spotty to find here locally and usually expensive and for higher strength things like cabinet doors and such and too much. Some of the craft store smaller ones can be pretty weak as well. Again test in store!

 

There are a few threads here about freeforming faller/Tomytec roadways and some attempts. I fiddled with this a long time back with the faller bus but got a little stymied when I though thru where to use the busses. When busses are running it can be the only thing on the road path and other vehicles around are stationary and that’s odd in many in town situation except maybe express bus lanes in a heavy traffic situation. I’ve seen it work well in rural or small neighbor hood scenes where there is little traffic so lone bus or two moving is fine. Faller busses were also pretty expensive, but With the Tomytec busses the price has dropped and gear and pausing sensors added so more that can be done. I’ve picked up a couple of Tomytec busses and thought of more playing but the pile of other projects has shoved it down on the list. 

 

Last thing is doing trucks. Faller system was great as the parts of steering, drive chain, battery and sensor were all separate and very mailable to go into most any good sized truck. The Tomytec has more features and is built in a big block so it makes it hard to modify and fit around a smaller truck cab.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by cteno4

[kvp]

Actually the only thing holding the steering and the propulsion mech together is the battery holder. The newer lipo bus chassis even has a set screw holding it together and if you move the battery out of the way, a really short axle distance is achievable. The trailer is also resizable and detachable. It's pretty hackable as all controls and sensors are in the motor part and the rest is just wired to it.