Best motive power for an unattended Museum display for long time use?

You've pretty much got it. Your best bet is something with can motors and NO on-board electronics other than a bridge rectifier to convert AC to DC for the motors. Williams (now Williams by Bachman) are pretty much bulletproof for this purpose, but eliminate the reverse unit in favor of a bridge rectifier. Old MTH Premier or Weaver horn-only units will also work for this purpose.

Also, if it is a long-term display, you might want to glue the couplers shut so they don't open from vibration.

"All cars on the train have the coupler thumbnails removed and couplers taped shut so they will not open".

In 60 years of Hi railing I have NEVER seen operating passenger car couplers used.  Just a waste of money, IMHO.

I'd vote for a Williams duel DC motored loco......w/o electronics as you state.

It would need cleaning and lube on a regular basis but if you did just wear it out....not a costly loss......and new parts are not real hard or expensive.  (salvaging parts from other like locos etc)

Hands down Williams, remove e-unit if reverse moves are an issue, with just regular clean and lube.

Diodes could create blocks of voltage for uphill, flat, and downhill.  That would allow you to use only 1 transformer and its momentum control would still work for startup.  Since transformer itself is switched on/off by the motion sensor, not sure how to solve the sudden-loss of voltage problem other than depending on the flywheel...or gluing coins to the flywheel if space permits.

We use Williams Locos at the Ronald McDonald House

Excuse me.....In what state, county and city is this museum in? Lastly, has this type of operation been approved by the City?

IMHO It is not wise to have anything running without supervision. Just because nothing happened in the past does not mean it will not happen.

That is a good point on running without anyone in the room.

That is always a concern. For the museum the room is not to far from the main entrance area where there are staff. It has sprinklers and could be set up with a video and sound monitor to the front desk for viewing.

As far as the holiday layouts that I do I have smoke detectors mounted underneath where the power is and they are near volunteer staff but it is set so they do not have to watch or deal with it constantly! 

I am most interested in the comments on diodes for the up and down hills humm tell me more ??? that sounds like a good idea!!!

I guess for another easier option the staff that runs tours of the museum could simply take people to the model railway room and run it for them as part of the tour this might be the best idea! 

The DC power pack with Momentum works really well for the holiday displays.

Again have all the electronics removed reverse unit etc.

Also helps to have extra power pick-ups from following cars wired in it really makes it reliable. 

Again there are people around but they are not skilled and do not want them doing anything with the railway has to run I tend it occasionally and if anything goes wrong there is a breaker bar on off switch and fire extinguisher near by! 

Consider having a button visitors can push that will run the trains for say, 2 minutes, then stop. 

Apparently you've stripped down the engine to run on DC in one direction.  So with your DC-transformer output, you simply use diodes to lower the voltage to specific blocks.  Each diode drops the voltage about 0.7V DC.  There's nothing magical about using 3 blocks.  You could use 5 blocks each with a different voltage tapping the diodes at different points to provide a smoother transition from flat to uphill and/or downhill.  6 Amp diodes ought to work just fine for what you're doing...search eBay for "6 Amp diode" and they're 20 cents each (10 for $2) with free shipping from Asia.  Or Radio Shack has them for about 75 cents each.

Based on personal experience, I chose 3 diodes (or about 2V) as a starting point to select the block voltages.  Depending on your particular engine, consist/load, and uphill/downhill grade you may want only a 2 diode drop followed by a 3 diode drop.  In other words some experimentation is in order to pick the starting voltage and then which "taps" of the diode string to use for each block. 

LGB.

For the Nixon Library Holiday layouts, we used Williams and removed the electronics and added a bridge rectifier. A $3.00 mod that allowed the trains to run 7 days a week, 7 hours a day for 3 months. A weekly service night was held to clean and oil them. If you are using a motion detector system so nothing is running if no one is around, you should get even better results than we did. Those little down time to cool of can work wonders.

Steve

Stan:

Tks for the details and diagrams. The Diodes look like they might work well for the hills.

Steve and others for a display layout that operates for long hours and at times has no one around watching the display if you want it to be automatic.

I highly recommend removing the electrical guts and just running on a good quality DC power pack with momentum and the motion detector system I mentioned.

It really helps with it being dummy proof the engines start slow and a good quality DC power pack with momentum will give the motors what they need in quality power so as not to wear the motors out.

It helps letting them cool down as well so not running for hours non stop.

Here is a photo of my motion detector.

You could also just purchase screw in plugs and screw them into the light mounts.

Make sure that the unit you are using has enough power rating for what your transformer requires.

I was going to suggest exactly what the first post describes (although I didn't even think of momentum control, that's a big plus.)  I'd also include multiple-redundant fast-acting breakers.

Following thread, albeit G scale, offers some insight into unattended layouts:

https://ogrforum.com/t...73#13960184943305473

@stan2004,

Any thoughts on which temperature range may be appropriate for a thermal protector? It seems there will always be wise guys that will toss stuff on to the track to watch a train hit it or run over it. The lowest I found on Digikey was 108°F hold and a 151°F trip.

Considering things that could happen for the "Eagle Scout needs help" restoration project that will be in a museum. It will be running regular AC conventional engines.

Before we built the display layout at South Hills Shopping Center in Cary, NC I asked the same question of several places already operating large display layouts. They all recommended Williams/Williams by Bachmann locos with the reverse units removed.

Based on that, we stripped out the reverse units and horns, and installed Radio Shack #276-1185 25A 50V Full Wave Rectifiers. The motors were wired in series for better low speed operation. 1/4" quick connects were used on the connections to the rectifier to make maint easier.

Rather than a motion detector, we used push buttons connected through ELK  912B relays, and 960 timers set for two minutes, to start the trains. It makes the kids feel like they are "running" the trains.

That should work as 150F is essentially too hot to touch and if a train engine is that hot it's working too hard.  Technically speaking, the desired trip point can be calculated based on the specs of the motor windings (e.g., enamel melting temperature) and heat transfer to the rotor and case but good luck finding or getting this data from a train manufacturer!  It's impractical to directly sense the motor winding temp so a TCO (thermal cut-off) on the case is the way it's done for motor protection.  Of course the motor is mounted to a metal chassis which acts as a heat-sink but I can't imagine a train manufacturer performing a thermal design of the motor drive. 

Separately, it seems a useful maintenance/performance monitoring device for intermittent displays is an hour-meter or usage chronometer.  Here's one for about $7 shipped on eBay - it counts hours whenever 9-80V DC (or AC) is applied which should be suitable for a train display.  So whenever you tend to the display you can see how often it has been used.  Search ebay for "hour meter".

Old Williams works best. Place a motion detector connected to the power source that way the locomotives are not running without people watching.

Scott Smith

Because the question was the best motive power and not the best o gauge motive power I will agree with the LGB/G gauge recommendation.

Look at the public use of trains.  In this area, restaurants, supermarkets, holiday displays frequently feature larger trains.

Visibility, durability, economy, bright colors, kid friendly, bigger flanges.

If you are going to protect trains from roaming hands you need to keep them high or at a distance.  If you keep them at a distance o gauge can get real small.

Gotta look at this opportunity as an average person on the street and not an 0 scaler.

Another thing I noticed, due to the comments, one could well assess that electronics are not that dependable.

It's not that the electronics aren't dependable. We had two reasons for pulling them out on the South Hills layout:

1. They aren't needed when you never want the loco to change direction.

2. They're an additional heat source inside the shell. Which doesn't help motor life when they are operating 10 hours a day, six days a week.

When show running diesels take out the plastic windshields. This lets in lots of cooling air and very few visitors will notice.

On several trips to the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh over the past 20 years, I noticed that they tended to use Lionel postwar steamers to pull their long trains.  Their layout has no switches and loops are independent.  Given the ruggedness of postwar engines, that might be a good choice, too.

Of course, Williams is also an excellent choice.  I have a number of Williams PRR brass steamers.  They are very durable, smooth runners in conventional mode.  Mine have TMCC but still retain their great operational capabilities.

George

We have not tried Williams, since they would have to be 2-railed for our museum.  MTH has given us incredible longevity.  We get three years of all day running before the first gear change.  Williams does have a good reputation.

LGB trains have successfully and dependably been employed in many commercial and museum settings, operating WITHOUT complicated electronics for hours on end - just pure DC with 7-pole Buehler motors - low heat and efficient operation!

I have installed and maintained many such layouts in Nashville restaurants over the years and can attest to their reliability.

There are some Williams factory 2 rail locos floating around the local train shows.   An A, a cab - forward and a Challenger.  Plus a PRR K-4