Have you moded your AeroTrain?

A smoke unit sounds like fun. 

There's no reason to add a larger rear motor, the motor is quite sufficient.  The issue with the rear truck is the oddball design with a single drive axle and the two pony wheels.  Unless you tweak this to get it tracking well, it's very troublesome.

I've toyed with the idea of adding smoke, I'm thinking of converting one of the two I have to TMCC.  I did add functional ditch lights to the PS/2 version.

I like it too.  Still trying to fine tune it to get it to roll smoothly.

I picked up the PS2 set at the Kutztown show yesterday.   It had 0.0 miles on the odometer!  I lubed it, but it is having the usual run problems with the rear truck slipping, so I will be doing the adjustments that have been well-described in the forum.   I have one question about lighting.   There are 5 "lights" in the front, 4 white and one red in the center.  Only the 2 outside lights work.  They turn off in reverse, but the red light does not turn on.  Is this normal?   I reviewed Youtube videos of other PS2 versions and it seems to be the normal behavior.   PghTrainFanatic posted a video of the PS3 version and all 4 of the white lights work.  In PS3 of course these are LEDs.

Does anyone know how the prototype lights worked?  I would assume that they ran 2 or 4 lights (high beams?) at different times, and the red light came on in reverse.

If this is normal behavior for the PS2 version, I will replace with LEDs and 220ohm resistors as GRJ has suggested.   I'll just need to figure out where the backup headlight pin is on the board.

GRJ, is the output 6V?  Do you use 220 ohm for both red and white LEDs or do you drop it to 150 Ohm for the white ones?

Bob

I use 470 ohms for red LED's and 220 ohms for the white LED's.  I don't recall if the PS/2 one has an internal connection for the reverse light or I added it.  I upgraded my PS/2 model with operating ditch lights and red reverse lights a few years ago.  However, the biggest thing was tinkering with the trailing truck to get it working properly.

If I ever stumble across a chassis for the Aerotrain locomotive, I'd like to take a stab at a more significant modification of the rear truck.  I think locking the wheels in place and losing the stupid pony wheels would probably end up working better than what they have now.  My goal was to get my locomotive pulling the ten cars, when I achieved that, I stopped tinkering with the truck.

You do have to keep the cars well lubricated to reduce the rolling resistance.  For a four-wheel car, they have a lot of rolling resistance, I've been tempted to remove the pickups and do one-wire tethers between the cars to reduce the friction.  It seems the center track rollers are one of the primary contributors to the excessive rolling resistance.

@RRDOC posted:

Does anyone know how the prototype lights worked?  I would assume that they ran 2 or 4 lights (high beams?) at different times, and the red light came on in reverse.

Bob

The outer lights were the headlights.  The inner lights were Mars lights (or would "sweep" side to side, hard to tell) ) mounted on the same mechanism as the red emergency light.   The red light would come on automatically if the train went into emergency, or at the engineer's discretion when stopped or moving in reverse.

Rusty

AFAIK, trains don't actually have "low beams" and "high beams".  They do dim the headlights in yards or when stopped to avoid blinding other engineers operating close by.

I used the inner lights as ditch lights and they turn on when moving and flash alternately when you blow the horn.  The PS/2 board has outputs for the ditch lights, so it was just wiring them up.  I used the red light when the locomotive was in reverse.

GRJ

Assuming the outputs are 6V, you must be stepping down from full brightness (20mA).  I imagine you have tweaked these over the years and settled on a reasonable level of brightness

Rusty Traque

I looked at the closeup photo in your link and clearly the inner lights and the center red are mounted on a tilting mechanism to sweep side to side.   That would be a cool effect.   I may try one of the Ngineering Mars circuits that features alternating throbbing lights.   That gives a pretty good Mars light effect.  And set up the red to light in reverse as GRJ did.  

GRJ

The Ngineering Super Mars Light Simulator NLD8031B runs on 3.2-16V DC.  Do you know if the headlight (or ditch light) drivers in the PS2 board will handle the load of the flasher circuit?  

Bob

I rarely try to run LED's at the maximum rating, I find that scaling it back a bit leads to longer life and they're more than bright enough.  My 220 ohm resistor and a white LED is way brighter than the stock PS/2 incandescent bulb.  Pushing the LED harder would have very little visible effect, but it could affect it's life.