Backing "against the pole" is pretty impressive operation, Bob! Tell us about the trolley and what drive it has, please.
Rich K.
Rich,
Thanks. I slightly bend the shoe on the trolley down a bit, so there doesn't seem to be all that much difference between forward motion and back polling. I guess time will tell if this comes back to bite me for some reason.
The car is a Shapeway shell of a "Brill" car. I hacked the windows and doors to make it look like Columbus, Light and Power #703 which was a very similar Khulman car. I glued 0.10 wire to the windows to affect the window grids the Columbus cars had to keep arms and hands in the car.
The chassis is a Tomytec TM-TR-01. This particular chassis was victim of having liquid solder flux spilled on it several years ago. After sitting on the shelf, I decided to tear it down as far as I could and rebuild it. In the process, I "Beardenized" it by polishing any bearing I could access and polished all contacts and whatnot. It seems to run at lower voltage than an out of the box unit. I had it running faster then I would off the track for this test (and at the show).
I had originally used styrene strips on the side of the shell so the chassis drops down in the correct position. When I added the trolley pole, which needs to press pretty hard against the wire, there were three impacts. 1) The front of the shell would lift off the chassis and it would try to do a wheelie. 2) If the pole was over the unpowered truck, it would lose traction. I then used lead tape (for tennis rackets) on the inside of the shell to make a stiff fit, then I always put the pole over the power truck.
If you are interested in the trolley poles and how they attach and feed power to the chassis, let me know and I can post some photos.
Bob
