23 replies to this topic

[Brickimad]

I wonder how many people still use the 12v system? I think it was the best system out, especially the remote points, signals,de-couplers and of course the automated level crossing. Pity the 9v didn't employ the remote points, especially on larger layouts - as you have to manually switch over - annoying...

[AFOL12v]

I do .



Currently I'm busy to build remote controlled switches for 9v. Only that financial crisis makes it harder to move on......

Look great all your matrial. Where do you live, I want to build a layout at your place .

Edited by AFOL12v, 14 November 2010 - 07:34 PM.

[Brickimad]

Panda9001100, on Apr 26 2009, 10:41 AM, said:

I do .



Currently I'm busy to build remote controlled switches for 9v. Only that financial crisis makes it harder to move on......

Look great all your matrial. Where do you live, I want to build a layout at your place .

I'm quite impressed with your layout, Lego Trains come as a 2nd hobby, as one room in my house is a computer room, the other is a Workshop for Radio Controlled Aeroplanes, where I build, the other main bedroom is well, the bedroom! (with a few aeroplanes dotted around, including filling the walk-in closet!)
Luckly the attic is a good size and have been gradually been converting it by adding floor, power and lighting, but ran out of space just for the 12V! The 9v sometimes get laid out in the sitting room, but even then its still tight.
I've got about 20 12v motors and 16 9v electric, and 2 9v battery motors, with a few 4.5v motors scattered around.
Looks like the problem you had with you layout is the wiring. What I did, before the floor went down, I put a multi-core cable terminating at various points to terminal blocks - labeled. So when I needed power or control, I just connect it and go.

[hoeij]

I think that the main problem with the wiring is that they layout is on the floor!

Put the entire layout on tables and self-made benches so it's off the floor, then the wiring can go
underneath (taped to the underside of the tables).  This also frees up a huge amount of storage
space because the boxes can now go under the layout.

[frankieT]

Hi,
I still use the 12V system, precisely because of all the remote-controlled accessories.
It doesn't matter what train I have running, but I can control all the points from one central location.
I have some of the old 4.5V battery trains, some of the newer remote control trains, but run them all on the 12V rail system.
My system is placed on two table tennis tables, side by side in my hobby room.
This also leaves room underneath for storage.

[Modulex Guy]

I do not use 12V but a little part inside of me really really wants to get into 12V.

Being a 9V fan and user, I am hesitating a bit on starting a new system, but a few Bricklink orders may change that, we'll see where this goes.

Mainly I like 12V for the above mentioned features, remote switches, decouplers etc.

...Oh, Nice RC Airplanes you have in your attic too.

Edited by Polish Guy, 07 September 2010 - 03:01 PM.

[Andy Glascott]

I'm still running 12v, I've got 5 motors, and still think it's the best system yet (though I haven't tried either of the newer incarnations). I've also got 9v stuff, but would buy more 12v if I could. Raising the layout on a table doe make sense, I reckon I have about 80 ft (25 mtrs) of wiring to run my layout, but most of it is invisible. That said, in a loft space by raising the layout you lose building area. I mananged to persuade my wife to give me space in the spare room last time we moved rather than use the loft, and although it is smaller that I would have had up there, it's warmer and easier to get at. I can also fit the boxes under there when the spare room is pressed into service for guests....

[Fuzzylegobricks]

Ive wanted to have one of these layouts for quite some time now. Do you know any websites and stores that sell them?

[AFOL12v]

Local ebay's (marktplaats.nl), Ebay.com (ebay.de) and offcourse bricklink.

Only it took several years to get a layout I have now.

[Fuzzylegobricks]

AFOL12v, on 14 November 2010 - 07:36 PM, said:

Local ebay's (marktplaats.nl), Ebay.com (ebay.de) and offcourse bricklink.

Only it took several years to get a layout I have now.

Thank you!

[patje]

I use 12 volt also and  there are very beautiful trains in it.
  

Edited by patje, 15 November 2010 - 08:50 PM.

[Gioppa]

12v was the best era for LEGO trains,for me,but I don't have the time and the money to get all the rail material I need.
And everybody here know why that was the best,wonderful train models(with lights),wire control of everything in the layout,wonderful crane and other railway material and don't forget in every railway station you can have light.
I like the new pf train because you can run four train in a normal layout,but we have to find a solution for switch and railway crossroad.
ok,wait for the next season of train and see what happend.

[AFOL12v]

12v has its own disavantages. You need to clean the 12v track regulary and the tires on the 12v motors can be wear out. And you need a lot of wires to connect everything, which is a nightmare sometimes. I think I have around used 25 metre of wire.

[Gareth]

AFOL12v, on 21 November 2010 - 10:14 AM, said:

12v has its own disavantages. You need to clean the 12v track regulary and the tires on the 12v motors can be wear out. And you need a lot of wires to connect everything, which is a nightmare sometimes. I think I have around used 25 metre of wire.

  Great stuff,
I'm still a 12volt user too, and still collecting my set up with help from places like bricklink.
I'm also in the process of converting my garage for the set up, using most of the old 80's town buildings too just to add a bit more of a nostalgic look to it. That way it would give me plenty of room and the use of tables I could create different levels, so the use of bridges and slopes/banks could come in to it.
Thinking about adding the new Power Functions also that would broaden the scope a bit.
When it's all complete i'll post lots of pictures.

Edited by Gareth, 31 January 2011 - 12:30 AM.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Lovely stuff in that pictures. I love also the dust!  
Big potential there!

[Legoless]

I used to have a mixture of 12v grey and 4.5v blue when I was a kid. I didn't have enough 12v to motorise more than a small section of temporary layout so I pretty much resorted to building push trains. I only had one motor and transformer also- my points were 4.5 volts and I had none of the other accessories.

But 12v really does have a sense of magic for me- I remember the sheer quality of the engineering- even the cardboard boxes were well made! 9v seems to have been a little bit of a step backwards in regard to playability. And from what I can tell from forum posts, TLG don't appear to have made it particularly easy to motorise 9v and later points, which seems a shame. My fantasy Lego train layout (to go in my fantasy Lego house!) would probably be a hybrid 9v-PF DCC system- assuming its possible to kit-bash some kind of pickup system.

12v though- back in the day this system was far and above anything else in the toyshop in terms of desirability and quality as far as I was concerned. Apart from playability everything else looked cheap and tacky by comparison- a bit like comparing a 1980s Mercedes S Class (back when Mercedes quality was unimpeachable) to a Russian Lada!

[Sokratesz]

Please allow me to ask a few noobish questions regarding these huge layouts:

- How do you prevent it from gathering dust if you let it sit like this for months?
- Does it all run on one stock power supply?
- I always get problems on large tracks with the trains running slower if they get further away from the power connection piece - easy to solve with multiple leads, obviously, but how do you do this?
- What's the best way to clean rust and dirt off of the midrails?
- How well do the remote decouplers really work, how precise does the positioning of the train need to be?
- I noticed many people use multiple switchpoints on one clickbox, is there a specific reason for this other than saving room?

Kind regards,

Tim

Edited by Sokratesz, 05 June 2011 - 12:01 PM.

[patje]

dust is for me a real enemy
you cannot do much against it...


only one painting brush and…
to work with it...


certainly in my case
the one side is in order
the other side becomes dirty

layout

[hoeij]

Sokratesz, on 05 June 2011 - 12:00 PM, said:

Please allow me to ask a few noobish questions regarding these huge layouts:

- How do you prevent it from gathering dust if you let it sit like this for months?
- Does it all run on one stock power supply?

You can if you want to (I tried out my blue 12V power supply, it has no problems with three 12V train motors.  I'm sure the same goes for the gray one too).

Quote

- I always get problems on large tracks with the trains running slower if they get further away from the power connection piece - easy to solve with multiple leads, obviously, but how do you do this?

For a large track, you need a multimeter to check for bad connections.  If you have a 100 track piece 12V loop, there should be litte slowdown *IF* all connections are good.  For a 150 track piece loop, I use only 2 leads (that's for 12V track,  for a 150 track length 9V track I would use 4 leads).

For your 100 track piece loop, you have a total of 200 connections (2 per midrail).  If even one of them is bad, you can have a pretty big slowdown on the track.  A multimeter is very helpful to find it.  When you insert one midrail into the next one,  sometimes you feel no friction on one side,  that is potentially a bad connection.   If you give the female connector side a bit of a squeeze, then insert the next midrail, if you feel some friction (on both sides) when you put it in, then you know you'll have a good connection again.

If you have a relatively small loop, and if you have a bad connection in one spot, then the electricity can simply go around the other way, and the train runs fine. But if you have a long loop,  then the electrical path (to go around the other way) becomes too long, so that one bad connection leads to a big slowdown (i.e. voltage drop) in certain parts of the track.  So for a large loop, all your connections (two per midrail) need to be good (either that, or you have to add more leads).

How long is your loop?  If it's less than 100, and if you see slowdowns, then all you have to do is to find and fix the bad connection.

For longer loops, I don't use the lego connectors to connect to the track.  I just connect the wires straight to the midrails (you can connect them at the bottom, you can bend open those clips, insert a wire, and bend them closed again).  This way it's easy to have as many leads as you want.  I use 20AWG wires (has a little bit less resistance than lego wires, so you can cover some distance without losing much volts).

Quote

- What's the best way to clean rust and dirt off of the midrails?

Go to a hobby store and buy some track cleaner.  Helps a lot.   Don't worry about rust, or other visible imperfections.  Those things don't matter.    It's the dirt that you can't see, that's what's blocking your electricity.  Put some track cleaner on a cloth and clean it.  Keep cleaning it until you see no more dirt coming off (for some reason I don't understand, you can see the dirt when it's on the cloth, but you can't see it when it was still on the track).

[Sokratesz]

Thank you for your elaborate reply.

I played with these trains when I was a kid in the mid-90'ies and now that I have a little more cash to spend I'm looking at starting it up again. I bought two large boxes full of tracks and switchpoints for a really good price and I'm now looking for a few affordable train sets to go with it. (if you have any tips on where to get them, ebay etc. are stupidly expensive). I finished sorting everything last week and by the looks of it I have about 150 straight, 200 curves, a bunch of crossings and 9 switchpoints, one automatic and another with an automatic box that needs a new spool.

Much of the track is dirty though, hence my question about cleaning but I'll check out some of the commercially available stuff :)

[hoeij]

Sokratesz, on 06 June 2011 - 08:02 AM, said:

I bought two large boxes full of tracks and switchpoints for a really good price and I'm now looking for a few affordable train sets to go with it. (if you have any tips on where to get them, ebay etc. are stupidly expensive).

Personally, my favorite "12V" trains are several of the locomotives from the hobby train box 10183.  

Quote

Much of the track is dirty though, hence my question about cleaning but I'll check out some of the commercially available stuff :)

I'd clean everything (if it looks clean, it's no guarantee that it's actually clean.  It's clean when the track cleaner won't take anything off anymore.  It doesn't matter how it looks like).  The train will start to run smoothly after you cleaned the track and ran the train a couple of loops.

For the traction bands, there's someone on eBay listing them for $0.85.   Those ones work well  (thin bands work better than thicker bands.  You want thin traction bands, then the train sits a little lower, which makes it go better through the switchpoints without derailing).

I once bought a 12V motor where someone had rubbed the electrical contacts with sand paper.  Never do that!  (don't think that they have to look clean, that doesn't matter).

On the 12V track, I like having cargo trains that run slowly and at constant speed.  This works better in 12V than under 9V.

[Andy Glascott]

hoeij, on 06 June 2011 - 04:07 PM, said:

For the traction bands, there's someone on eBay listing them for $0.85.   Those ones work well  (thin bands work better than thicker bands.  You want thin traction bands, then the train sits a little lower, which makes it go better through the switchpoints without derailing).

Rather than buying dedicated traction bands for 12v motors, I use bicycle inner tubes such as these. Most cycle stores will have an equivalent. For £3 I've got an almost endless supply, I simply cut a section off wide enough to fit the wheel.

Andy

Edited by Andy Glascott, 06 June 2011 - 04:28 PM.

[Brickimad]

Regarding long layouts, I've added extra power pick-up points into the layout.
The main power goes to a busbar, or a chocolate block, with connections for adding outputs. Every now-and-then, add a pick-up point to that section, which does two things: Increases the voltage, overcoming voltage drop (resistance) and if there is a "dead" bit, that would sort it.
p.s. make sure polarity is correct!!!
The full-size electric trains also use the same system, every few miles, a different sub-station powers a few miles of line, until the next section. Have you noticed when on a train, power being switched off and on. Of course the train has it's own internal power, both to run the lights, and prevent overloads when coming into a new section.

Edited by Brickimad, 06 June 2011 - 09:53 PM.

[Sokratesz]

I got lucky yesterday and bought a 7745 (high speed train) with some extra rails and a spare power supply for cheap :D My current budget is out, once I get salary I'll start looking for the 7727 specifically - I had that one when I was a kid and really loved that set.

Once again, thanks for your help everyone!