A Beep, Bang, and then a Buddy RDC...

i also have a set of the depressed flats with loads.really nice cars.i also have their new s4??? which is real nice and runs great.very strong puller.

terry.......

My cousin's little kids agree, they ran Beeps, Bangs and Buddies absolutely ragged on my door layout yesterday. They really laughed every time they blew the Bang's horn.

I bought a bunch of the ore cars, two depressed flatcars, and the pair of PARR Buddy RDC units.  I'm going to TMCC one of them and make them into a commuter train.  The price was right to grab them.

John, I reckon the Buddies look great in a2 or 3 car set too. It's nice how you can set the lights on the trailing car.

Well, we'll see how well I can get it working with TMCC and directional lights in the dummy.   I still have to figure out how to make the second one into a dummy without the trucks falling off.  The fact that the motors in inside the trucks and not vertical may actually work to my advantage here, the trucks will still be mounted with the motors missing!

I may stick a LCRU that I have from another project in the slave to manage the directional lights back there.  Since the electronics package will have to go for command/control, I'll have to manage those myself.

I have so many BEEPs I have lost count, most of them bashed or modified, a few in bizarre but fun ways.  I also have a lovely BEEF A-B-B-A set that I repainted for my wartrain, three BANGs and the Buddie car.  I like them all, and I have never had one die or give problems.  RMT provides a lot of fun for the money . . . 

Well, these two are on the chopping block, they'll see the knife soon.

I will be very interested how it goes.  

I'm really looking forward to the Classic 64 reefers announced on their website. I have one of the old K-Line Heinz reefers from the same molds. These will be great woodsided reefers for semi-scalers. The tough part is going to be deciding which ones I can afford to get. I sure hope RMT will continue to run sales once those make their arrival. 

You might have to wait for some sales.  They do need to rethink their MSRP, they're pretty high when compared to other makes.

John,

On your buddy dummy project.  Just leave the motors in the trucks.  The lights have their own circuit boards, which use the the motors as a generator.  You can push the buddy without any track power and the lights will work in the correct direction.  You would just have to disable the e-unit so the TMCC track power doesn't reach the motors.

But leave the lights circuit connected to the motors.  I learned some of this from the ERR mini commander instructions for the buddy.  

http://www.electricrr.com/Manu...BuddyV2-Snd-Inst.pdf

One concern about leaving the lights powered from the motors is they will only work at speed.  At slow speeds, they'll be very dim or not lit at all.  If I rewire them, I can have them work properly at any speed or stopped.  Also, the friction of the motors will be a concern, though that's probably not much of an issue with only a pair of cars being driven.

I'm not sure why they're worried about the lighting direction switch, I'd just wire them to operate in my chosen mode.  I guess I don't see that being a superior solution, though it's a lot less work.  I'm going to see if I can use some of the logic on the lighting boards in conjunction with the directional lights, however I'd like the lights to be functional while stopped or at slow speed.