Level rail crossing and other questions for TomyTec bus system

[JanW]

Hi all!

I am considering to have a bus or two driving around on my lay-out. My layout does not lend it self to the use of the standard off the shelf road sections supplied by Tomytec. I have no experience with this system yet and I am searching and reading about it on internet and on this forum. In all it is a bit confusing to me and I am left with a number of questions that I hope some of you may be able to answer also to check if my idea's are feasible. I plan to create my own road sections and maybe even a complete station square with a bus stop.

1. Will the Faller Car system wire work with the Tomytec buses? 
2. What would be the minimum turn radius for the bus? 
3. Is it possible to have a level rail crossing? I have the standard Kato automated rail crossing. Would be nice if I can have the bus cross that crossing. E..g. if there is no guide wire, will the bus automatically continue straight on or will it behave erratic and swerve off the road onto the tracks? 
4. There will be junctions with traffic lights. How can I make a bus stop at the red/amber light? I understand that you can control the bus with magnets under the surface. Is there a spec to buy a electromagnet that does the job?
5. Would it be possible to create a remote controlled turn-out, such that one bus may go straight and the other pulls over or turns left or right? 
6. I may like to have two buses. Is there a way to detect the position of a bus to create a block system that prevents that the buses run into each other? 

[cteno4]

5 hours ago, JanW said:

• Will the Faller Car system wire work with the Tomytec buses? 
• What would be the minimum turn radius for the bus? 
• Is it possible to have a level rail crossing? I have the standard Kato automated rail crossing. Would be nice if I can have the bus cross that crossing. E..g. if there is no guide wire, will the bus automatically continue straight on or will it behave erratic and swerve off the road onto the tracks? 
• There will be junctions with traffic lights. How can I make a bus stop at the red/amber light? I understand that you can control the bus with magnets under the surface. Is there a spec to buy a electromagnet that does the job?
• Would it be possible to create a remote controlled turn-out, such that one bus may go straight and the other pulls over or turns left or right? 
• I may like to have two buses. Is there a way to detect the position of a bus to create a block system that prevents that the buses run into each other? 

 

Jan,

 

a lot of this “should” work but it will rely on a lot of experimentatiion and fiddling. I did a lot of experimenting with the older faller bus (basically the same) by taping wire under 020 styrene to see what was possible with it. I’ve not repeated it with the tomytec busses yet. A few on the forum have tried some of these and linked to some videos on others efforts. Search aroud the forum as there have a few threads on this innthe past.

 

i would suggest picking up a tomytec bus and getting some wire that works (use a magnet to find one that reacts the best) and just play some. Best to experiment and see if this suits your needs, skills, likes. There also is always the issue that your bus road will be vacant if other vehicles for the most part, which can look odd if you have other roads with a lot of vehicles near them. Some don’t like that contrast even with the fun of the moving bus. They have looked the best to me when used on more rural roads, or suburban odd curved streets where the bus is not making all 90 degree corners, or with only a portion of the line is visiable so a large van ant street loop is not as visible. You can also think of having bus express lanes, but then some folks don’t like having just the bus moving and all the other vehicles stationary, but could model rush hour with traffic jam and only the bus is moving in the open express lanes! Always tradeoffs... 

 

here were my experiences others will I’m sure have more.

 

1. Faller wire works. You need a very magnetically reactive wire, not all are. I tried my first tomytec bus on my old faller wire and it worked fine. The tomytec bus seems to have a stronger neodymium steering magnets than the old faller, so that is good for better wire detection and holding them on the wire.

 

I would opt for making styrene streets you can pull up and to keep adjusting instead of trying to bury your wire in a trench and cover it up, hard to do any adjusting once buried.

 

2. On faller busses I was able to get them down pretty tight like 2-3”. Doing some easements can make tight turns better and look a little more realistic like starting by swinging wide a little.

 

3. Yes I got them across 2 tracks with home made road and I added small bits of wire to the pieces in the road sections between the rails. Hitting the flangeways could a few times knock it off course. I did these with the bus running thru, not stopping before the tracks, but there are videos of folks stopping them before an automatic crossing and then starting them. Of course the more tracks in a row the more chance the bus could get knocked off course.

 

4. I’ve not seen any specs on electromagnets for stopping the busses or changing speeds. The faller electromagnet was pretty massive, but they were working a reed switch and the tomytecs I think use a much more sensitive Hall effect sensors and tomytec road sections use neodymium magnets. Again this may require some experiment to create your own to do the trick. Other option might be to put a little neodymium magnet on a servo to pull it in place or to the side to have it off if electromagnets don’t do it for you, but you will need a lot more room under the roadway.

 

5. Yes you can make your own points. I made manually thrown ones that just drag a wire to one of two facing wires. If a bus approaches from the opposite direction and the point is not throw properly it usually can span the gap if a pretty straight shot and pick up the other end, but better if point is thrown properly. This could easily get thrown by tortoise mechs or rc servos.

 

You can do a roundabout/reversing loop very well though by just doing the reversing loop and having a small gap in one of the loop wires at the Y. Bus will go on the continuous wire leg at the Y when entering the loop and then just spans the gap on the way out.

 

6. This would be very tough as the bus has no electrical interaction with the road. Photosesors in the road could detect busses going over spots (ie to just pause busses at intersections if one is detected already there or switch a bus to not try a stop if one is already at the stop) but not transpond which bus it was. RFID would work as they can be tiny (like a grain of rice) and you can tune their detector antenna quite a bit to get diffenrent shaped detection fields, but it would be a pretty intense electronics and computer programming project. Photosensors would be a much simpler with arduino shields.

 

get a tomytec bus and play, I had a lot of fun with the faller and want to play more with the tomytec when I have the time. You can use neodymium magnets under your board to play with stops and speed changes.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

Anoter thread. There are more but quick search is not bringing them up. I think one chap who did the bus turntable actuation also did a servo controled point. Search can be frustrating in forums!

 

 

[JR 500系]

Interesting plan! Here are some of my inputs through my reading and also experimenting:

 

1. Will the Faller Car system wire work with the Tomytec buses? 

Sorry I cant advise you on this as I don't have any faller car system... but technically it should work 

 

2. What would be the minimum turn radius for the bus? 

For Tomytec buses, smallest turning radius is R66 as per Tomytec, but do remember Tour buses (i.e. coach buses and non route buses, basically buses that are much longer) that uses the BM-03 chassis CANNOT turn at R66. They require the next tighter turn (R103) to make it through the turn smoothly, though I have tried using R66 for the tour coaches and sometimes they make it through but other times they get 'derailed' and veer off course... 

 

3. Is it possible to have a level rail crossing? I have the standard Kato automated rail crossing. Would be nice if I can have the bus cross that crossing. E..g. if there is no guide wire, will the bus automatically continue straight on or will it behave erratic and swerve off the road onto the tracks? 

This is a complicated project involving magnetic servo motors, as seen here on this video: 

(Apologizes as this has been posted a few times, but it is by far the neatest and best looking one!) 

 

4. There will be junctions with traffic lights. How can I make a bus stop at the red/amber light? I understand that you can control the bus with magnets under the surface. Is there a spec to buy a electromagnet that does the job?

Similarly like the grade crossing as above, one might need a servo motor and magnets. As for the junctions, they are primilarly controlled by the switches below the junctions, like so:

 

Therefore, it might be possible to make that all remote-controlled, though as a novice I seriously have no idea how to make that happen! 

 

5. Would it be possible to create a remote controlled turn-out, such that one bus may go straight and the other pulls over or turns left or right? 

Like above, I think one might be able to come up with a remote to control whether the bus goes straight, turn left or turn right. It might then be possible to link the stop-and-go piece with a remote so that one can control the signal lights in conjunction with the bus moving and stopping (i.e. Red traffic signal bus stops, green bus goes etc.) Although again being the novice I am and not an extensive knowledge of electronics and magnets... 

 

6. I may like to have two buses. Is there a way to detect the position of a bus to create a block system that prevents that the buses run into each other?  

HHmmm this will be interesting... Sorry with my limited knowledge I cant answer that...

 

 

Hope you have fun trying this out as it would be very interesting to see it complete! 

[kvp]

Just a few remarks:

 

For moving turnouts and stop sections, it's possible to use servos. Any standalone turnout servo controller (like Peco's) or an Arduino will be good. If you don't know how they work, the Peco servo control pack works off the shelf and has both manual switch and DCC options.

 

For variable speed settings, it's possible to mod a stop section to be a speed change section instead.

 

For detecting the buses, the trick is that they have a guide (steering) magnet. It's possible to use hall effect sensors to detect the magnets as they pass over the wire. Control magnets are over the side to avoid knocking the steering off course. An analoge to digital converter (or a comparator) will be needed to convert the output of the hall sensor to a digital signal. An Arduino or a standalone comparator with a threshold potmeter could work here.

 

For crossing, the Tomix 37mm tram piece has the grooves for the crossing wires molded in and you can also add V shaped correction wires to the exit side to recapture any stray steering magnets. Any stop sections and barriers have to go around this piece or you can add the same wire setup to any crossing you like.

 

For wire, i got some enamel coated steel jewelry making wire from a local craft shop. They also sold round neodymium magnets that are similar sized as the Tomix magnets and work nicely. The wire diameter is roughly the same as in the road pieces.

[cteno4]

Ohh neat idea on using the Hall effect sensor to detect the steering magnet! 

 

Jeff

[JanW]

Absolute great idea's and solutions ! Many thanks for all this. 🙏

 

In the mean time I have ordered the B3 bus starter set and will have a go at it! 

Indeed I planned to get myself on the learning curve of applying Arduino electronics. The use of hall-effect sensors is indeed a great idea. I even started wondering why these are not applied to detect trains in a DCC controlled lay-out (maybe they are). 

As a mechanical engineer, the use of these modern electronics opens a whole new realm of learning, opportunities and challenges, but it will keep the grey cells going! 

 

I am now wondering to 3D print my specially laid out road crossings including the levers, servo brackets and magnet holders and hide the servos in buildings along the road.
 

By the way, is any of you aware of nice Japanese traffic lights with working LEDs build in being readily available in the market?  I only found dummy traffic lights without LEDs (KATO and Tomytec). Fitting these with SMD LEDs would be a rather fiddly job.. 

[JanW]

6 hours ago, kvp said:

For detecting the buses, the trick is that they have a guide (steering) magnet. It's possible to use hall effect sensors to detect the magnets as they pass over the wire.

 

Great idea!  Would you know if the sensor could be installed below the guide wire or should the guide wire be interrupted at the point of the sensor? 

[kvp]

2 hours ago, JanW said:

 

Great idea!  Would you know if the sensor could be installed below the guide wire or should the guide wire be interrupted at the point of the sensor? 

It should work when placed right below the guide wire. The more sensitve, the better. Usually the 3 pin analog amplifier variants are good (5V in, gnd, analog out).

[JanW]

4 minutes ago, kvp said:

It should work when placed right below the guide wire. The more sensitve, the better. Usually the 3 pin analog amplifier variants are good (5V in, gnd, analog out).

 

Thanks a lot! 

I am a layman here. Do you refer to this kind of components? 

 

https://www.getgoods.com/products/606592/Hall-effect-sensor-TRU-COMPONENTS-AH-3503-UA-4.5-6-Vdc-Reading-range-0.0195-0.0255-T-TO-92-Soldering.html

 

[kvp]

1 hour ago, JanW said:

 

Thanks a lot! 

I am a layman here. Do you refer to this kind of components? 

 

https://www.getgoods.com/products/606592/Hall-effect-sensor-TRU-COMPONENTS-AH-3503-UA-4.5-6-Vdc-Reading-range-0.0195-0.0255-T-TO-92-Soldering.html

 

Yes. Just make sure you get a type that has the right sensitivity and output type. The two common ones are analog and open collector ttl digital. Both could be processed by an Arduino. (either as an analog reading or a digital keypress)

[cteno4]

There was a set with a controller circuit done by sakatsu in 2011, but oos at Hs. MIT check with Nariichi San at mtp. Stuff like this can be sort of garage production in japan and not always sold widely. I suspect youth it was not a huge seller.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&state=&sold=0&sortid=0&searchkey=Shining

 

jeff

[kvp]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

There was a set with a controller circuit done by sakatsu in 2011, but oos at Hs. MIT check with Nariichi San at mtp. Stuff like this can be sort of garage production in japan and not always sold widely. I suspect youth it was not a huge seller.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/search?typ1_c=104&cat=rail&state=&sold=0&sortid=0&searchkey=Shining

I think the price and the extra delicate wiring has to do something with it... (a variant with plugs on the bottom of the signals and standard wire sockets might have been more popular)

[cteno4]

Yep that’s probably it. Also it’s a bit odd to have changing street lights but the vehicles never move, a bit post apocalyptic feeling... it’s funny as I’ve seen it used in a few bad B movies to give that sensation, light changes but nothing moves...

 

jeff

[JanW]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Yep that’s probably it. Also it’s a bit odd to have changing street lights but the vehicles never move, a bit post apocalyptic feeling... it’s funny as I’ve seen it used in a few bad B movies to give that sensation, light changes but nothing moves...

 

jeff

Yeah, indeed it may be a bit apocalyptic however I have seen road crossings in Japan (e.g. at the crossing where I lived for 9 months in Yokohama) that operating 24/7 with hardly any traffic after 9 PM. Of course pedestrians wait patiently and obedient for the light to turn green while there is no car in sight. Very tempting for a anti-authoritarian Dutchman like me! 

[kvp]

Well, it might be ok if only buses and trucks are on the road. The taxis could be parked, a few cars stuck at a never opening Tomytec crossing, while the buses and the trucks are moving, stopping, turning, crossing the tracks, etc. Just don't put cars in the middle of the street. One extra trick is to keep any cars standing at the crossing with a constant red, but allow green for the buses in the other direction or lane. An arduino could handle the hall reading, the servo control and the light control with only a few commands. (select yellow and move the stop servo, select red when in position, select green and move the servo after a time, wait until yellow, repeat) The Tomix TCS sensors are seen as two open collector pushbuttons by the Arduino, so easy to read them too for adding automatic crossings.

 

ps: The hall sensors are really only needed if there are block sections on the bus line instead of stop to stop traffic, where the buses always have at least one stop distance between them. A conditional stop could be disguised as a traffic light too.

[cteno4]

Still odd w.o the cars going. Usually of all the vehicles it’s the cars are the ones much more constantly on the move and the bigger vehicles stopped more.

 

Animation on layout has this problem, everything is static except for the trains and then maybe a few other things. Hard thing is to find the thingsnthat when animated get the mind’s eye into filling in movement in all the other static elements and not doing the reverse of drawing attention that things are unnaturally static while some are not. Mind’s eye is fun to play with but a tricky beastie. Also can be very diffenrent in some as some find any animation other than the trains extremely creepy.

 

jeff

[JanW]

My starter set B3 just arrived. I have been playing and experimenting a bit with it and noticed a few things:
1) The bus steering mechanism and magnet is quite strong. It does not easily gets off track. Without guide wire however, the bus does not tend to go straight or anything (no under or oversteer). So level track crossings need short sections of guide wiring everywhere. Will be a fiddly job to fit them on Kato rail crossings. 

2) My bus is slightly limping. It seems that one of the front wheels is not exactly concentric with the axle. I suppose it is not made in Japan 😉

3) The break lights are not visible through light conductors at the break lights of the bus. Instead you see a red glow through the rear window.

4) The magnet to accelerate or decelerate the bus does not really have a noticeable effect on the speed. The bus does not drive very fast. I'll need to try again with brand new batteries. 

4) the tires are made of very soft rubber that have a good grip on the road. This allows for steep roads (maybe 12% or more) however the tires quickly collect dust and loose their grip. So tires need cleaning often if you have gradients. (i plan to have an underpass under the rail tracks).

5) the standard Tomytec road is rather wide. 37 mm for a single lane = 5.5 meter. Normal roads have 2.5 - 3.5 meter wide lanes. 

6) the road sections are 6 mm high being some 1 mm higher than the footplate of Tomytec houses. So houses would need additional shimming to create a curb and side walk. 

 

I plan to make my own (more narrow) road sections, crossroads (even with traffic lights), and a bus station where buses wait a while and for each other. Plan to make them out of PE sheet. So need some more experimenting. 

I ordered some 50 meter of 0,5 mm steel (iron) wire for just a few euro. I intend to test to see if this wire is suitable as guide wire and test various turn radiuses. 

[bill937ca]

The road with is the standard Tomix 37mm track center.  The height matches Tomix Wide Tram track.

[gavino200]

On 7/2/2018 at 10:22 AM, JanW said:

Hi all!

I am considering to have a bus or two driving around on my lay-out. My layout does not lend it self to the use of the standard off the shelf road sections supplied by Tomytec. I have no experience with this system yet and I am searching and reading about it on internet and on this forum. In all it is a bit confusing to me and I am left with a number of questions that I hope some of you may be able to answer also to check if my idea's are feasible. I plan to create my own road sections and maybe even a complete station square with a bus stop.

1. Will the Faller Car system wire work with the Tomytec buses? 
2. What would be the minimum turn radius for the bus? 
3. Is it possible to have a level rail crossing? I have the standard Kato automated rail crossing. Would be nice if I can have the bus cross that crossing. E..g. if there is no guide wire, will the bus automatically continue straight on or will it behave erratic and swerve off the road onto the tracks? 
4. There will be junctions with traffic lights. How can I make a bus stop at the red/amber light? I understand that you can control the bus with magnets under the surface. Is there a spec to buy a electromagnet that does the job?
5. Would it be possible to create a remote controlled turn-out, such that one bus may go straight and the other pulls over or turns left or right? 
6. I may like to have two buses. Is there a way to detect the position of a bus to create a block system that prevents that the buses run into each other? 

 

What material are you using there as a track underlay? What's it like? Noise dampening?

[brill27mcb]

9 hours ago, JanW said:

My starter set B3 just arrived. I have been playing and experimenting a bit with it and noticed a few things:
1) The bus steering mechanism and magnet is quite strong. It does not easily gets off track. Without guide wire however, the bus does not tend to go straight or anything (no under or oversteer). So level track crossings need short sections of guide wiring everywhere. Will be a fiddly job to fit them on Kato rail crossings. 

2) My bus is slightly limping. It seems that one of the front wheels is not exactly concentric with the axle. I suppose it is not made in Japan 😉

3) The break lights are not visible through light conductors at the break lights of the bus. Instead you see a red glow through the rear window.

4) The magnet to accelerate or decelerate the bus does not really have a noticeable effect on the speed. The bus does not drive very fast. I'll need to try again with brand new batteries. 

4) the tires are made of very soft rubber that have a good grip on the road. This allows for steep roads (maybe 12% or more) however the tires quickly collect dust and loose their grip. So tires need cleaning often if you have gradients. (i plan to have an underpass under the rail tracks).

5) the standard Tomytec road is rather wide. 37 mm for a single lane = 5.5 meter. Normal roads have 2.5 - 3.5 meter wide lanes. 

6) the road sections are 6 mm high being some 1 mm higher than the footplate of Tomytec houses. So houses would need additional shimming to create a curb and side walk. 

 

I plan to make my own (more narrow) road sections, crossroads (even with traffic lights), and a bus station where buses wait a while and for each other. Plan to make them out of PE sheet. So need some more experimenting. 

I ordered some 50 meter of 0,5 mm steel (iron) wire for just a few euro. I intend to test to see if this wire is suitable as guide wire and test various turn radiuses. 

 

You have summed the Bus System pretty well!

 

You can probably improve the eccentric front tire by playing with it for awhile, making sure it is fully down and centered on its wheel. Also watch for any rubbing of tires on the wheel openings of the bus body.

 

Some modelers use a V-shaped ferrous wire under the roadway to collect and re-center a bus that has started to drift to one side or the other when going over a crossing.

 

The brake light is simply on the circuit board inside - it is not made to look like the real thing. Also, when a bus detects a "slow-down/speed-up" magnet under the track, another LED near the brake LED will blink. Bend down and look for it while the bus runs, to make sure that your bus is actually detecting the under-road magnet. That magnet must be both correctly placed and correctly oriented polarity-wise (top vs bottom). When it is working, you can see the slight speed change, and will see the LED blink.

 

Rich K.

[JanW]

18 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

What material are you using there as a track underlay? What's it like? Noise dampening?

Yes, I applied greyish felt (with an adhesive back) as noise dampening. It works pretty good and it kind of visually integrates the separate tracks. The tracks are left loose on the felt. 

[JanW]

13 hours ago, brill27mcb said:

You can probably improve the eccentric front tire by playing with it for awhile, making sure it is fully down and centered on its wheel. Also watch for any rubbing of tires on the wheel openings of the bus body.

Yes, it did get better after a while. Will leave it for a while to avoid the risk of making things worse!

 

13 hours ago, brill27mcb said:

Some modelers use a V-shaped ferrous wire under the roadway to collect and re-center a bus that has started to drift to one side or the other when going over a crossing.

Yes, saw that and it is a good idea! Probably make some form of chicken foot with both a guide wire straight on and a V-shape. 
My KATO automated crossing wil need to get a groove in the road bed to hide the wire in. There is no space for the guide wire from the back with all the PCBs and the barrier mechanism underneath. That will require some careful machining of a 0.6 mm groove... 

 

13 hours ago, brill27mcb said:

The brake light is simply on the circuit board inside - it is not made to look like the real thing. Also, when a bus detects a "slow-down/speed-up" magnet under the track, another LED near the brake LED will blink. Bend down and look for it while the bus runs, to make sure that your bus is actually detecting the under-road magnet. That magnet must be both correctly placed and correctly oriented polarity-wise (top vs bottom). When it is working, you can see the slight speed change, and will see the LED blink.

Yeah, I noticed both the red and the yellow light. I did not know that the hall sensor in the bus is sensitive for the orientation of the magnet. Will need to keep that in mind when making my own road sections and bus stops! Do you know if that is also the case with the long stop magnet? 

 

As you seem to be an expert on the subject: Do you if and where I can buy the magnets separately (i.e. not as part of a Tomytec kit)? 

[Pauljag900]

If it’s any use I know Faller use magnets in their kits but not sure if you can buy them seperately

For some reason I can’t paste the link

if you search Faller.de

car system 

spare parts

there s three diferent types on there, may be worth a look jan👍😀

[JanW]

Just wanted to share some tests I did using Neodymium magnets I picked up from an on-line store here in The Netherlands. I did not shop specifically for Neodymium magnets but they were simply the only ones that were available at the size I was shopping for.  They are actually quite cheap (€ 0,21 - € 0,46 per piece) I bought 3 types to run tests with: 

• block magnets of 10 x 4 x 3 mm with the N-S orientation across the 3 mm thickness. This is the same as the block magnet used by Tomytec to stop the bus.
• cylindrical magnets 4 mm diameter and 4 mm thick. N-S orientation along the cylinder axis.
• cylindrical magnets 4 mm diameter and 2 mm thick. N-S orientation along the cylinder axis.

Objective of the tests are to come up with my own road design that is just 4 mm thick (instead of 7 mm by Tomytec), 50 mm wide (instead of 74 mm for Tomytec) for a dual carriage road (and just few mm wider at a bus stop), allows to move the stop magnet e.g. with a RC servo and allows for a turn-out, also operated by an RC servo.  

 

The Neodymium magnets are a lot more strong than the classic ferro ones used by Tomytec. 
I wondered why Tomytec uses a block magnet to stop the bus oriented in the driving direction of the bus? I found that the short distance the bus needs to come to complete stop causes the bus to just pass the small Tomytec speed control magnets, i.e. the bus effectively continues without stopping.

 

So I first tried to use the Neo block magnet as my alternative. It is quite a strong magnet that interferes with the bus steering magnet when positioned the same as Tomytec does (some 10mm from the guide wire. I had to move the magnet away from the bus as far as 14 mm from the guide wire.  To get the bus moving again the magnet needed to be shifted to 19-20 mm from the guide wire. This is a problem because the magnet needs to be at the right side of the bus i.e. at the inside of a dual carriage road. The magnet could infere with an upcoming bus at the other side of the road if the road is made more narrow than the standard Tomytec roads. The road at the bus stop would need to be much wider than my target of 50 mm to allow an upcoming bus at the other side of the road to pass without inadvertently being stopped by the stop magnet at the other side. 
So the Neo block magnet is too strong fo my purpose.. 

 

I made a test road with bus stop with the desired dimensions out of 0.5 mm PE sheet. I simply used commercially available 0.5 mm diameter iron (steel) wire. Works perfect with the Tomytec bus, no need to buy the expensive Faller wire.

 

Next I tried to use the smallest (4 x 2 mm) cylindrical Neo magnet to stop the bus. Would it be strong enough to stop the bus before it passed its magnetic field while stopping? Indeed it does! The small magnet could simply be positioned at 10mm away from the guide wire. I also added the 6 sec delay magnet of the same small Neo magnet type (N-S orientation is reverse as for the stop magnet):

 

It appears that the bus stops nicely on time and the 6 sec delay magnet was detected. The steering magnet is not impacted by the magnets. See the below video:

 

Opposing buses are not impacted by the magnet (in stop position):

 

Next I moved the stop magnet 5 mm away from the guide wire:

You can see that the stop magnet is now roughly half way the two guide wires. If the guide wires at the bus stop were at the normal 22 mm distance for the dual carriage road, the magnet would get too close to the  opposing guide wire. So at the bus stop the guide wires really should be minimal 28 mm apart. 

 

Now the bus simply continues at the bus stop. 

 

Finally I had to verify if the opposing bus is not stopped by the stop magnet at the bus stop. The distance between the magnet centreline and the opposing guide wire is only 13 mm..

 

 

Apparently, the stop magnet only needs to be moved 3-4 mm away from the stop position to get the bus moving again. This could easily be done with a RC servo. 

 

Form all this I plan to proceed with:

• 50 mm wide dual carriage roads / 27 mm single carriage roads. 
• Bus stops with quide wires at least 28 mm apart.
• 4 mm thick roadbeds, enough to accommodate the mechanism to move the 2 mm thick stop magnet back and fro.
• The use of the 4 x 2 mm Neo magnets for both stopping, speed control and 6 sec delay at bus stops. 
• the use of 0.5 mm commercial steel (iron) wire. 

Comments? 

[JR 500系]

Perfect! You're a genius! It looks good enough to be sold on the shelves! 

 

I'll be sure to revisit this thread again when I get back to building my moving bus layout... Truly is more useful over the Tomytec default ones! How do you stop and move the bus off at the bus stop?  🙂