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 Posted - June 28 2018 : 07:02:52 AM
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It amazes me to see you guys using the hand throttles all the time when you run your cars and trucks. I have to admit to not being a racer at all - Sorry Doug!
I like my roadway traffic to run at a set speed and to leave it running whilst I enjoy the spectacle. As soon as I buy a slot car set the power plug in section is set aside and I replace it with my own connections soldered to the undersides of the contact rails.
When I first started running my own HO roadways here in the UK in the 1980s the main make available was Minic, and there were loads of ex model railway controllers available (mostly Tri-ang), which were not very good for running the cars as the controllers had too high a start voltage and this gave little or no slow speed contol of the cars... So a chum made me a couple of these.....
This is a simple box containing a transformer and a pair of quality feedback model railway controllers. Sadly ECM Compspeeds are now no longer available, but they were really good. Any quality make of simple controller will do.
I have been using these units for around 25 years now! That is scary! Sorry about the labels, but they get used to do lots of things!
Later another very clever chum made me three of these:
These are powered by an off-the-shelf model railway transformer that knocks out 18v ac at 2 1/2 amps. The controls allow me to set the direction and speed from the box OR plug in a hand throttle and drive it from that instead.
The hand throttles are smart, as they have been modified from those sold with Scalextric, but they don't carry the actual track power, just a token and the electronics does the rest inside the box!
I can also limit how fast the cars can be driven off the hand throttle, so the public can drive, but crashes are hopefully limited!
There is a second version of this box that allows me to drive two half wave cars under independant control on each track.....Faller, Rasant and Ideal made these. I find it best to set one car off with the set speed throttle and drive the other. Tail chasing! The public love doing this!
To be fair this kit was expensive and is probably over-engineered - but what you need to drive your own circuits doesn't need to be anything like as complicated. If you have a pair of decent model railway contollers and the hand throttles a simple two way switch arrangement for each lane (clear of the roadway) will allow you to have cars and trucks running constantly at pre-set speeds or for you to drive it...OR drive one lane and have the other running constantly.
James
Edited by - Highwayman97 on June 28 2018 08:50:19 AM
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Country:  United Kingdom ~
Posts: 128 ~
Member Since: December 10 2016 ~
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Posted - June 28 2018 : 08:52:41 AM
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A couple of off-the-shelf things you could try to run slot cars with a model railroad power pack:
1) Try a transistor throttle. If I understand correctly, it'll send a fixed voltage to the track regardless of the size of the motor being driven.
2) If you have a rheostat throttle, wire an automotive tail light bulb in parallel to the track. A rheostat controls the speed of a motor by splitting the voltage of the transformer between the motor and the rheostat. If the two are mismatched, you get the jumpy control mentioned. With the tail light bulb, the voltage is split between the rheostat and the bulb, and the motor inherits the voltage across the bulb. This way, the tiny slot car motors don't have to match a rheostat that was designed to control big high-amperage open frame locomotive motors.
Note: I've only done these things as a remedy for newer low-draw train motors and haven't tried them with slot cars, but I would think the principle would be the same. And, if you tried either of these and it didn't work, all you'd be out is some tinkering time.
Carpe Manana!
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