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Just yesterday recieved my order for a Lionel Birney Trolley.  As I would like to convert everything to command control someday, I wanted to ask if the bumper-controlled forward/reverse feature would remain operable if it were TMCC-equipped.  It doesn't matter to me if it is or not, I was just curious.
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Aaron-

 

I looked at the exploded parts view of a bump and go trolley, and it seems the mechanism consists of two sprung bumpers and a DPDT toggle switch. My guess is when the trolley hits a track bumper, the sprung bumper compresses enough to push the toggle switch to the other throw, which in turn causes the motor to reverse (the unit has a DC motor, so reversing the wires will reverse the direction of the motor).

 

You can add TMCC to the unit, but you would lose the bump and go mechanism.

 

-John

AcelaNYC,

    John if Guns says he can do it then I believe he can make it happen, in fact I have been wanting a Pennsy Bumper Fire Car or my Pittsburgh,Pa Red Bumper Street Car up graded in just this manner with ERR, but did not know if it was possible, because of the actual size of these bumper cars.  Guns did a great job getting the ERR into my 249 engines Tender, and it maybe even smaller than the bumper cars.

PCRR/Dave

Last edited by Pine Creek Railroad

On the Fort Pitt Highrailer layout we had limited success with bump and go trolleys. Just didn't hold up to the all day back and forth.  Trolleys with electronic reversers, Forward/neutral/reverse, worked well with a Dallee system designed for Back and Forth.

 Installation instructions.  We did get this to work well at 8 ft of track.  Recommended total track length, I believe is 12 ft.  

Trolley.  

Last edited by Mike CT

The bump-n-go mechanism (sliding bar driving a mechanical DPDT switch) requires a minimum speed to reliably activate on each reversing crash.  One advantage of command control would be you can "precisely" set the speed above the minimum determined speed.  This was difficult to do using conventional control due to starting torque voltage requirements when reversing...causing the speed to typically be way above the minimum bump speed.   But still lots of wear-and-tear from repeated collisions.

 

If modifying and adding control module anyway, one idea is to replace the mechanical sliding bar DPDT switch with a DPDT latching relay.  The relay would be activated by magnets/reed switches on each end of travel.  So the trolley would not have to smash into the bumper or whatever.  Instead you'd install a 25 cent magnet on the track near each end of travel.  The magnets would trigger 50 cent reed switches in the trolley which would trip the DPDT relay (replacing the DPDT mechanical switch).  So maybe $5 in additional parts but would eliminate wear-and-tear from collisions.  This would also allow the trolley to go quite slowly under command control and still reverse by itself.

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