The Randall Museum in San Francisco hosts a large HO-scale model model railroad. Created by the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club starting in 1961, the layout was donated to the Museum in 2015. Since then I have started automatizing trains running on the layout. I am also the model railroad maintainer. This blog describes various updates on the Randall project and I maintain a separate blog for all my electronics not directly related to Randall.
2024-08-12 - An Update on the Trolley Automation
Category RandallI made a quick attempt at placing Thomas on the (failing) Trolley Automation.
That did not work very long… Thomas worked well there. But like the other trolley units, it had the same problem: as soon as it would stop on the resting point, it would lose conductivity overnight and would not be able to work the next day.
I think there’s something essentially wrong with the track at the end of that spur.
Eventually I will check with Orion about simply changing the rails. There’s not a ton of scenery and almost no ballast there, and it’s easy to access. My first suggestion would be changing the track for something more modern and with better conductivity.
I would also really like to go back to my initial orange trolley with the characteristic sounds and lights. That engine has a LokSound DCC decoder that works fine on the bench, but it fails to reply to start or stop commands “after a while”. And that’s on top of the track becoming a dead spot overnight. I have a few spare decoders I can use for that.