N Scale Rapido RTL Turboliner

[daniel_leavitt2000]

So all the trucks pick up electricity - and do nothing with it? Yikes. Who is designing these things?

[vermonter_railfan]

So all the trucks pick up electricity - and do nothing with it? Yikes. Who is designing these things?

I mean they help supply power to the coaches that are also providing power to the interior lightning...

But in all seriousness, while annoying its at least a easy fix more most people who know how to use a soldering iron. I plan to add the jumper wires to mine tomorrow.

[brill27mcb]

Rapido's wiring seems to address "lighting flicker" but not "motor flicker."

Rich K.

[ek2000]

Received mine. Have not cleaned my track in a while but the set runs great even at low speeds. There are class lights at the top of the powered car. The alternating strobe lights and class lights look great. The lower class lights of car at the rear end light up in red. In all, each powered car has 8 exterior lights and have lighted interiors in addition.

The sound is VERY well done, on par with the 8-40CM they released. The turbo sound is ear piercing after a while. Details are great and dont interfere with the operation.

I had a brief moment of scare when one of the powered sets would not sit flush on the track. Thankfully, removing the truck is a breeze (screw held at the bottom) and the wheel had to be removed and inserted back in.

Overall, a fine trainset and very nicely executed.

[spookshow]

Yes, I'm finding that it is very easy to dislodge the axles from the wipers - pretty much any downward pressure at all and they're popping out. Also, I'm not really sold on the flimsy plastic couplers. Most of the time they couple like they're supposed to, but it seems like there's always at least one car that doesn't want to cooperate. IE, push it together with another car and you'll hear the "click", but they don't actually couple. It's hard to see what's happening in there, but I'm guessing that one side or the other is bending out of the way instead of coupling. Kind of annoying, especially when you have to try over and over and wind up popping all the axles out.

-Mark

[PRB]

I just put my ohm meter on my set received yesterday. 
Both power cars show zero resistance between the front and rear truck on both sides.
The trucks are electrically connected, at least on my set.

Tim

[spookshow]

I just put my ohm meter on my set received yesterday. 
Both power cars show zero resistance between the front and rear truck on both sides.
The trucks are electrically connected, at least on my set.

I concur - with track power applied to only one of the power car's trucks, the motors on mine spin regardless of which truck is receiving the power.

-Mark

[spookshow]

I can see one rather large problem with the way these cars were designed. Current is shared from one car to the next via stiff wires embedded in the specialized plastic couplers. Current is transferred from each coupler to contact strips inside the chassis courtesy of insulated wires which are soldered to the coupler. Metal springs inside of the seating details transfer current from the contact strips to the PC board. This is a very problematic scheme since those couplers are constantly pivoting back and forth through curves and stressing the wires. As pictured below, one of mine has already failed -



-Mark

[peteski]

Yes, that  does not look like an optimal design.  Part of the problem (with any stranded flexible wire being used in constantly-flexing application) is the way the insulation is stripped.  It is usually done by wire stripper with metal blade cutting the insulation. But more often than not the blade also nicks several copper strands, weakening them.

When I need to strip insulation for flexing applications I used to use pointy tip of my soldering iron to melt, not cut the insulation around the wire.  That does not damage any copper strands.  I then found a thermal wire stripper which does the same thing but much neater.  The tool is called Hotweezers.  Not inexpensive, but I found it on eBay for an affordable (for me) price.  But even without that tool, the soldering iron works quite well. Just make sure to clean off any melted plastic residue  from the tip, or it will cause the tip surface to oxidize and unable to be wetted with solder. Best to dedicate a tip just to wire stripping.

Also the type of wire makes a difference.  Some stranded wires have a large number of very fine copper strands and a very flexible insulation. Unfortunately most of the time a cheaper wire with fewer stiffer strands and stiffer insulation is used by manufacturers.

In my experience the most flexible wire is the decoder wire from ZIMO and BRAWA.  ESU wire is also not bad, but in my experience Digitrax and TCS wire is not quite as flexible.

Adding a strain relief will also greatly reduce the chances of broken wire.  When repaiting the connection I would strip a very short amount if insulation and solder the wire in a way to have the unstripped wire as close to the solder point, then apply some 5-minute epoxy (as it is starting to set) around the solder joint, creating a fillet around the wire.  The will protect the weakest point in the wire's solder joint.