MOC: Norfolk Southern EMD SD70M-2 - Now with 400% more power!

[jrathfon]

How are you doing your decals? I am about to start attempting some on my current project. Any tips would be great!

Edit: nm, just saw you used O scale stickers from eBay

Edited January 24, 2014 by jrathfon

[legoman666]

How are you doing your decals? I am about to start attempting some on my current project. Any tips would be great!

Edit: nm, just saw you used O scale stickers from eBay

eBay is correct, but technically they're decals. I brushed over them with decal setting solution (essentially clear coat). Clear nail polish doesn't work, there's some ingredient in it that dissolves plastic and decals. Without the clear coat, they like to flake off, especially if you have to take the model apart.

I also added cabin lights to both the dummy and the powered locomotive.

[legoman666]

One more modification complete to strengthen the front transmission. No more random self dismantling.

Here we go:

Ignore the wires ;)

Nearly identical exteriors. A few small differences for the keen of sight.

The bits that makes it go. A pair of buck-boost DC-DC converters bump my Eneloops from 7.2V to 10V. I bypassed the resettable fuses in the battery packs because I kept tripping them.

A lot of time went in to engineering this transmission. I wish I could show it in its entirety, but alas, I am not taking apart the whole thing :P

About 16ft long. My setup is 6 72"x30" tables. It barely slows down around turns.

[legoman666]

In order to run on my LUGs displays, I had to make a few modifications to the power plant on my EMD...

A few bridge rectifiers...

Metal wheels and pickups... Pickups from here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=79145

Each pair of pickups gets 2x 2A bridge rectifiers in parallel. I wanted one wheelset to be able to power the whole train briefly without overloading.

I added a second input to each buck boost converter so I could connect the 9v pickups.

All back together.

Lots of electronic goodies in here. Too bad I can't put this weight on the drive wheels...

Tracks are electrified to 12V by means of an ATX power supply. At full speed with no other cars besides the two locomotive's and the electronics autorack, the motors pull 1.25A On the straights and 1.5A on turns.

http://youtu.be/HO1q60VM5ec

The train can run on battery or powered rails, but not both at once. Have to turn off batteries if running on powered track.

Edited April 14, 2014 by legoman666

[zephyr1934]

That is insane! (and very well done)

[BlueSpaceman]

WHAT A MONSTER! That thing must tear the rails apart! Awesome MOC by-the-way.

[legoman666]

http://youtu.be/U5CiqUofdik

Latest modification allows it to run on powered track and unpowered track seamlessly. The reason it's slipping is because I killed one of the motors in it so one of the bogies is unpowered.

Schottky diodes prevents the track voltage from cooking the batteries and a bridge rectifier prevents reverse polarity from cooking my electronics and the batteries from back feeding to the track. Dc-Dc converter keeps a constant 10V to the IR receiver regardless of power source. Going to add a fan next, it gets warm in there!

Technically, the two wheel sets can be on 2 sections of track that are opposite voltages and it should function as normal, although I'm not sure why it would ever happen...