Adding Pickups to Your Locos/tenders

[brammie]

I have just ordered a couple of sets of DCC Concepts Wiper Pickups (12 Packs). I've seen mixed reviews on other sites, but not tracked down any comments for/against on NRMF. I would be grateful for any input from other site members. Thanks in advance.

[Suzie]

I have used the replacement wheels with spring pickups and they are extremely good, but not used the wipers yet.

[Free_at_last]

I was given a pack to try but found them too stiff and they caused too much friction.
I prefer to use pcb and guitar strings.
I did this last week on an old Bachmann Fowler tender after converting the loco split chassis for dcc..

[RAF96]

Often you can pick up a later tender chassis which has pickups and in Hornby’s case a decoder socket and speaker mount, meaning you can get shot of the awful springy finger drawbar connection in favour of a proper plug to match the tender socket.

[Free_at_last]

4 pin jst leads are also cheap and easy to fit.

[Bigmet]

The most effective pick up is always from driven wheels: these should be carrying most weight for tractive purposes and thus have the largest contact pressure on the rails; and if pick up wipers are used, the friction is directly overcome by the motor, so there is none of the 'theft' of traction when wipers are used on unpowered wheels, the drag of which has to be overcome by the driven wheels adhesion on the rails. Adjust wipers if necessaray for continuous contact with wheelbacks. Adding weight to models, balanced as close as possible to the centre of the driven wheelbase. is useful. (Some believe that wipers on driven wheels steal power from the drive, but if the loco when held back still smoothly slips the wheels at 'dead slow' speed, and can run at scale maximum speed with the heaviest load, this may be seen to be a misapprehension; the motor has sufficient power to overcome the wiper drag without any impact on performance: this is typically true of modern can motors with multistage gear trains whether RTR or kit built OO.) Traction tyres are the spawn of Satan, insulating rubber where metal for conduction is required, discard.

First priority therefore is to obtain the best pick up from the driven wheels. Optimising this often means no need for any other pick ups.

Preference in pick-up on unpowered wheels when essential: use of live axle or split axle wheelsets with the pick up from the wheel bearing(s). This means no extra drag above that inevitable with bearings. A steel pinpoint axle in brass or phosphor bronze bearings will enable a model to roll away on 1 in 200 or less,

I typically remove wipers from unpowered wheelsets on RTR OO, and would never contemplate adding any...

[brammie]

Thankyou guys; some ideas there to get me thinking. I am particularly struck with the argument for using driven wheels as host for extra pickups. Waiting now for my order to arrive from UK, once customs here in Germany have played their little games.

[Peterm]

A friend of mine bought some of the DCC Concepts pickups but didn't use them because of how stiff they were.

[brammie]

Tried installing a pickup set on undriven wheels of a loco tender yesterday. Despite the tender having the additional weight of DCC chip heat-shunt plates, the wheels would not turn against the resistance of the sprung pickup contact plates, so that's a non starter. Back to the drawing board.

[Dad-1]

Funnily enough I've never fancied adding extra pick-ups.
To my mind very good track laying aided by keeping the rail head and inner edges clean
results in good running. I will admit that if you use Set-Track pointwork any short wheel
base 0-4-0's won't run happily at slow speed.
This is the reason to design all layouts to have live frog track work. Also other problems
come from the standard of locomotive build, like the plastic chassis Hornby 0-4-0's, they
are always problematical.

I even removed pick-ups from my Hornby Railroad black 5 tender as the drag was so severe
the loco couldn't pull 3 coaches around 2nd radius curves without severe wheel slip. With
their removal, a little extra added weight in the loco and it pulls 8 without a problem, or
any stalling.

However IF your track, or a particular loco is a problem do what you think may help !!
Just think clean & heavy !!

Geoff T

[Mountain]

Those little Hornby 0-4-0's had their wheelbase extended slightly so that they are less likely to stall when crawling over the large plastic insulated frogs in the points. The issues they have were more due to dirty wheels (The backs need cleaning as well as the treads) or that the pickups need adjusting. Get the pickups just right and these thigs will crawl well even over pointwork, but it takes patience. If the pickups are too strong it will not crawl. If too weak they lose the current. Takes time to get them just right.
About eight years ago... Maybe ten (?) the clever Chinese revamped these little locos and they now "Should" run supurbly. They look the same but they now have lighter thinner pickups and they are roumoured to now have 5 pole motors though I have not opened up one of the modern types to check. They have lost their top speed so they now behave well.

I have not tried any of the new expensive 0-4-0's that Hornby make as I simply want them as donor locos so though the new locos look fab., they cost a bit too much to consider and even if I did buy one, they look far to nice to use as donor locos! Maybe one day I will come across a half wrecked one that still has a good mechanism and basic body structure to work on to make a 7mm NG conversion?

As for pickups? Go for guitar strings soldered onto a PCB. I used strands of bicycle gear cable as it was what I could find at the time, but to be honest, this ends up needing cleaning if I have not run them for a while before the loco works. I now have guitar string somewhere so it will end up with new pickups eventually to save me cleaning the things!

[Bufferstop]

Free_at_last, what guitar strings do you use, It's much easier to go into a music shop and ask for the right string, than it is to explain what you want it for and can I have a look at some. Time was as a part time roadie I could just grub around in the rehearsal room (old brick built air raid shelter) until I could find a piece that would do.

[Mountain]

I was given a few old guitar strings. Not tried them yet. I have no idea what strings they are. They are metal. (Nylon guitar strings don't work).

[Bigmet]

...very good track laying aided by keeping the rail head and inner edges clean results in good running...
This is the reason to design all layouts to have live frog track work...

Quite, but for many (most?) with a layout, since UK set track doesn't offer live frog, this is not attainable. The UK set track system is really poor...

...I even removed pick-ups from my Hornby Railroad black 5 tender as the drag was so severe the loco couldn't pull 3 coaches around 2nd radius curves without severe wheel slip. With their removal, a little extra added weight in the loco and it pulls 8 without a problem, or any stalling...

I have a decent sampling of Hornby's tender loco range, multiple classes of pacifics, 4-6-0, 2-8-0 and 0-6-0's, and 2-6-0, 4-4-0. Not one of them has its tender wiper pick ups in place, and they all run completely reliably on my all live crossing pointwork layout. I started this after a Stanier 8F was completely stalled due to draggy tender wipers! I have found the tender wipers become draggier with running, and after 2 years operation the brakes are hard on. It's bad enough that the tender axle 'bearings' are nearly 'no roll'; that's worth fixing too for any so inclined...

[Davidjpriddle]

I like the idea of PCB + guitar string (Free-at-last).
Has anyone tried a similar system for the bogie of an 0-4-4, eg M7 tank?
I was also wondering if the wire causes wear on the wheel surfaces.
Many thanks in advance.