Mountain wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 11:31 am
Slip coaches are interesting! Often thought DCC could be used to operate a slip. One would need heavy wheels such as Romfords and some nice bearings for free running. Would be interesting!
Actually it's now easier yet than that. I have adapted a Heljan class 128 parcels car mechanism to motorise a full brake coach, and such mechanisms could equally well be adapted to power a slip coach. Speed matching is so effective with DCC that no coupling is required, the slip coach runs at matched speed on the rear of the train and at the right moment can then be slowed to 'slip' and make its station stop. Of course it can also unslip itself, the express goes through non-stop, and the slip coach chases after it until it settles on the rear of the train.
Doesn't seem right somehow, a motorised coach. I've thought about slip mechanisms in the past including one that via contacts in the four foot would tell the ( necessarily remote - what's the point otherwise on a small layout?) operator that the slip had been completed. Should any kind of non-motorised device be found what a super exhibition centrepiece it would make - the coach mysteriously left behind on the middle road of a station, the arrival of the branch train, the loco of which collects the slip, attaches it to its train and then chugs away back down the branch again. The stuff dreams are made of.. Meanwhile, if only intermittently, the quest goes on.
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