Motorized Dumping Slag Car (Video!)

That is awesome, Bill!!!!

George

Nice!  I'm sure you'll get the particulars figured before the slag dump is ready.

Thanks @G3750 I'm excited that it worked out!

I suspect so @coach joe. I probably won't have the wood for that section of the table for another month and I'm still getting things wired up at the existing table. I also made a final revision to the blast furnace model and it's on the 3D printer now. Turns out I was lazy on some of my measurements and pieces weren't lining up as expected. We should be good now!

Bill, can you please go into more detail as to how you built the dumping mechanism? I would surely love to see how you did it.  I have 7 slag cars just waiting for this kind of upgrade.

I sure will @third rail. I slapped it together in my excitement the day the motor came and only realized I didn't document the process afterwards

Just be aware that currently, what you see is the project. I haven't done any work on powering and controlling this thing in a more hands off way. I'm considering trying to cram everything in the slag pot. I'm waiting on another motor and some hardware to arrive. Then I will do some more explaining.

Pretty cool.

I think you need to add some orange slime to pour out of the cars. It would flow like the molten slag.

https://www.amazon.com/Hallowe...684168127&sr=8-4

@NJCJOE posted:

Pretty cool.

I think you need to add some orange slime to pour out of the cars. It would flow like the molten slag.

https://www.amazon.com/Hallowe...684168127&sr=8-4

Absolutely...if I had a way to get it back into the cars haha I wonder how well that stuff flows. You could stay a pretty cool operating session if you staged it ahead of time. It would surely be the only one of its kind in all of model railroading!

I found a board online that takes 18VAC to 5VDC:

It just happens to be the right size to fit inside the slag ladle in the car:

I don't know if that is a good place for it but it would allow me an opportunity to power this car via track power. My slag dump is on a spur. I'm considering wiring individual sections of track to DPDT switches and then connecting those to an 18VAC power supply. This would let me control the direction of the motor and (when switched to the right polarity) still run a locomotive to the end of the spur if I ever needed to. Plus the system works much better on 5VDC:

So that seems to be a good solution for now. I'm still looking into options though. I don't even know if I can add a pick up roller to the car. Other options I would like to have would be limit switches but we'll see. I won't need those if I can't even control the thing in the first place. I also would have to find a way to hide the wires from the ladle to the motor.

I'm still waiting on another motor to come in. I can't make a guide. But I can show you this:

You can fit the motor into the existing cylinder tube if you drill/cut out the plastic housing inside there (you'll see it if you disassemble the car). Then drill a hole big enough to fit the M3 threaded rod through the cylinder body. The little slider piece can then be tapped out for M3 threads like I did here OR you could thread an M3 nut on there and glue the nut to the slider piece. It's just too bad the slider piece isn't more precisely fit to the rods. That would be something worth improving. I used a motor from Amazon, ASIN #B09ND5H94Y. You'll need to cut the shaft a bit shorter and you'll have to trim the corners off the brass plates to fit it into the cylinder tube. I will make a photo guide once my parts come in.

That's really cool! Is it possible for you to place the board next to the motor and fabricate a cover to hide it? I realize that you will lose the platform and railing. But it would free up the thimble.

I don't think there would be enough real estate @third rail but I could check and see. There may be enough space on the other side if some of the equipment is removed. Somebody with a bit more experience than me might know where to find a find a smaller board to convert 18VAC to 5VDC. Maybe there's a different form factor available for that board.

I plan to make a slag load to cover the board, for what it's worth. Hopefully it will look like Lionel's slag car loads. Right now I'm just trying to find pick up rollers or trucks with rollers so I can power the car. I am surely using the wrong words in my search because I'm coming up empty handed. I did find MTH #BD-0000025 but I can't seem to find it for sale anywhere.

Edit: I guess "collector" was the term I needed. I bought a few to try to mount to the trucks. I would have rather bought MTH trucks that have the collectors already mounted but that's ok. We're just chasing down whether or not it can be done. What kind of terrible things might happen if a locomotive ran over a piece of track with polarity reversed suddenly? I was planning to insulate sections of track so I could individually control the polarity of each car via the section it is on. But there's a chance of curious fingers or an occupied mind leaving that polarity flipped.

Edit 2: of course I haven't figured out a way to keep the cars in the off state while they travel from the blast furnace/open hearth to the slag pit. But that's another issue for another day and I think I have an idea of what to do.

Bill,

Great work!  You are getting there.

George

Thanks! It's been rewarding. I could see why some people love to do this sort of stuff!

Hmm . . . on your power/control issue, perhaps there's something you could do with the old-school DC offset that has been used for years to activate bell and whistle sounds from the transformer. IIRC, that circuit throws something like a 5 VDC offset to the AC track voltage, which activates either the bell or, with reverse polarity, the whistle on the tender. If you could figure out a way to separate that DC voltage from the track voltage (and are not already using the feature for its intended purpose!), you might have the basis for both powering your slag car to dump and to return the hopper to its original position from the transformer.

OTOH, if you already have a full command and control system, ISTM it should be possible to send a command that would activate or restore the hopper. That would require an additional board at minimum, on top of the buck converter you already have, so perhaps you'll have to end up with a cable link to the next car, where you can hide the 'works'. As I said, hmmm . . .

@BillYo414 posted:

I don't think there would be enough real estate @third rail but I could check and see. There may be enough space on the other side if some of the equipment is removed. Somebody with a bit more experience than me might know where to find a find a smaller board to convert 18VAC to 5VDC. Maybe there's a different form factor available for that board.

I plan to make a slag load to cover the board, for what it's worth. Hopefully it will look like Lionel's slag car loads. Right now I'm just trying to find pick up rollers or trucks with rollers so I can power the car. I am surely using the wrong words in my search because I'm coming up empty handed. I did find MTH #BD-0000025 but I can't seem to find it for sale anywhere.

Edit: I guess "collector" was the term I needed. I bought a few to try to mount to the trucks. I would have rather bought MTH trucks that have the collectors already mounted but that's ok. We're just chasing down whether or not it can be done. What kind of terrible things might happen if a locomotive ran over a piece of track with polarity reversed suddenly? I was planning to insulate sections of track so I could individually control the polarity of each car via the section it is on. But there's a chance of curious fingers or an occupied mind leaving that polarity flipped.

Edit 2: of course I haven't figured out a way to keep the cars in the off state while they travel from the blast furnace/open hearth to the slag pit. But that's another issue for another day and I think I have an idea of what to do.

Have you thought of powering the dump motor with post war type slide shoes and powered rails at the dumping site? That would avoid the need to place the electronics in the car and solve the actuating problem too.

@Steve Tyler are you saying the pulses of DC would land between the peaks of AC? I always wandered how that worked on my conventional sets. It would be perfect in this case. I have to wonder if I could literally just use the whistle and bell buttons?

@iguanaman3 there's a heck of an idea. Do they sell reproduction shoes? I suppose I could make my own to be honest. That would really save me some trouble concerning the three normal rails being powered.

I think we got three contenders for how to accomplish this. I was planning to just use a normally open momentary switch in the circuit. Then use a wooden dowel coming up through the tracks to close the switch.

@BillYo414 posted:

@Steve Tyler are you saying the pulses of DC would land between the peaks of AC? I always wandered how that worked on my conventional sets. It would be perfect in this case. I have to wonder if I could literally just use the whistle and bell buttons?

Well, sorta-kinda, but if you were to display the ordinary sine wave of AC power (half above and half below the zero line) on a 'scope and apply a DC offset voltage, the mid-point of the displayed voltage (and in fact, *every* point of the wave!) would shift up or down, depending on the polarity. In other words, you'd see the same sine wave on the oscilloscope, but just moved up or down the amount of the DC voltage imposed, and on average the combined voltage would be plus (or minus) the offset voltage.

To be honest, I'm not entirely clear how the DC offset gets untangled from the base AC voltage (my old-school brain says to use a choke/inductor between the track voltage and the DC motor, in order to block the AC voltage but let the DC through, but I haven't a clue as to what value to suggest), but I suspect whatever worked for the bell and whistle in a tender might work as well here (or even easier, since rather than having to use rectifiers to power only one of the two devices (bell and whistle), a reversal of voltage to the one device would just spin it in reverse, exactly as desired), or there might be some better/easier way using contemporary components. In any event, yes, I do believe you should be able to use that DC voltage offset to alternately dump or restore the bucket on your slag car.

@BillYo414 posted:

@Steve Tyler are you saying the pulses of DC would land between the peaks of AC? I always wandered how that worked on my conventional sets. It would be perfect in this case. I have to wonder if I could literally just use the whistle and bell buttons?

@iguanaman3 there's a heck of an idea. Do they sell reproduction shoes? I suppose I could make my own to be honest. That would really save me some trouble concerning the three normal rails being powered.

I think we got three contenders for how to accomplish this. I was planning to just use a normally open momentary switch in the circuit. Then use a wooden dowel coming up through the tracks to close the switch.

There are plenty of postwar truck plates available with slide shoes on them for operating cars and you won't need roller pickups at all. The shoes are reproduced and available at parts dealers too. MTH also used them so they might have them brand new.  With long enough power rails you could have multiple cars dumping together too. Slide shoes can be problematic on main lines and catch on switches but for this special purpose car I do not see a problem. Lionel did use them for many years.

@iguanaman3 posted:

There are plenty of postwar truck plates with slide shoes on them for operating cars. MTH also used them so they might have them brand new.  With long enough power rails you could have multiple cars dumping together too. Slide shoes can be problematic on main lines and catch on switches but for this special purpose car I do not see a problem.

I think any type of truck with power pickup, roller or slide, would work just fine to access track voltage, and as you say, there's plenty of them out there, often at junk box prices if there's other damage to the donor car. Swapping out trucks can be a bit fiddly, especially with power pickups and associated wiring, but the process is fairly straightforward and easy to master IMHO.

Well that is a fancy trick @Steve Tyler. I didn't know that could even be done but I also would be very interested in learning how it is "untangled". I think I know what my reading material will be tomorrow at work on lunch.

@iguanaman3 I have heard of shoe problems but in my case, I will barely be going yard speeds. I will encounter double slip switches and three way switches but I wouldn't imagine it will be an issue at slow speeds. I wonder how difficult it will be to fit the shoes to MTH trucks.

@BillYo414 posted:

@iguanaman3 I have heard of shoe problems but in my case, I will barely be going yard speeds. I will encounter double slip switches and three way switches but I wouldn't imagine it will be an issue at slow speeds. I wonder how difficult it will be to fit the shoes to MTH trucks.

If the "wheel base" is the same as postwar trucks the plate will just clip over the axles and you bend tabs to hold it in place. The plates have couplers on them but they can be cut off. I wish you luck in this project. I think it will look pretty cool.

@iguanaman3 good to know. That might make things easier if it just clips on. I'll have to take some measurements. Thanks!

@BillYo414 posted:

@iguanaman3 good to know. That might make things easier if it just clips on. I'll have to take some measurements. Thanks!

I must have replaced dozens of those sliding shoes on postwar stuff during the year I worked at World of Trains in Rego Park in the 70's. They broke off a lot I guess and nearly every operating car had them.

Bill

Here's an idea for hiding the buck converter,  you can fabricate a spacer car to place between the slag cars and hide the converter inside,  running wires to the motor.  I built one from an old Atlas 4 wheel bobber caboose. When I pull out my tablet I'll send you a picture of it.

I may not have the track length for a spacer car @third rail but I'm very interested to see what you have. I current use the MTH scale test car as a buffer car between the locomotive and hot metal/slag cars. I intend to modify it so it doesn't look like a misused scale test car.

I'm considering just taking some points from the ideas here so far and combining them. I may just put two separated brass plates on the underside of the slag car with the motor leads attached to them, and have two rods that can be raised up through the track and wired to a DC power supply and DPDT switch. It would be like this gizmo, only with powered rods. It would come up between rails where the power would be for the post war shoes and and it would eliminate the need for an extra board. Plus the motor lead wires will be easy to hide because they would go straight down through the deck of the car instead of sneaking along the frame into the ladle. The brass plates would be big enough that accuracy wouldn't be a problem. Then I could place a marker of some time so the operator knows where to stop the locomotive so the rods will contact the plate. Then you just flip a switch for each car. This might be the simplest move. I have spare servos that could move those rods and blending the holes in the road bed so they're not noticeable wouldn't be too hard. I already planned to use the rod method to hold cars in place in the yard so it's not like this will be a pain. 

We'll see. I'll be laid up this weekend after a wisdom tooth extraction. The doc they're in there pretty good. Maybe I'll be forced to sit around and I'll sketch this up and work out a prototype. I should be able to make a little photo guide to doing this modification too.

I posted this to show off but it sure has been a helpful thread!! Thank you all so much for discussing this and contributing ideas.

To dig a bit further into some of the ideas I floated, I started another thread: https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...c/175005213577705641 To make a long thread short, I think there's potentially some good pathways to remotely controlling your slag car -- I commend the above thread to your attention, even though it's still very active! Again, good luck!

@Steve Tyler posted:

To dig a bit further into some of the ideas I floated, I started another thread: https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...c/175005213577705641 To make a long thread short, I think there's potentially some good pathways to remotely controlling your slag car -- I commend the above thread to your attention, even though it's still very active! Again, good luck!

I think some great methods have been unlocked that are worth trying. The smaller converter board posted really opens some opportunities up if you can have a DC power source on board from somewhere else.

My only question: what happens to other locomotives on the layout if I press the whistle/horn button to activate a motor?

Bill

You could take a Tortoise Switch and use it to push up a post between the ties that engages the slag car's bucket(?) tilting it one way to unload and then tilting it back once empty..

@BillYo414 posted:

I may not have the track length for a spacer car @third rail but I'm very interested to see what you have. I current use the MTH scale test car as a buffer car between the locomotive and hot metal/slag cars. I intend to modify it so it doesn't look like a misused scale test car.

Here's my spacer car, including a shot of the underside.  A standard Atlas bobber is 5&1/2 inches long.  I cut mine down to 4 inches plus the couplers.  If you delete the weights,  you could have enough room for the boards.

Shorten the coupler shank & add a roller or sliding shoe & it might work for you.

I don't have a scale car or know what the innards look like so I can't comment on its use.

Good luck with the wisdom tooth extraction.  The pain and swelling afterwards can be worse than the procedure itself. Talk to the oral surgeon prior and see if you can take some NSAID (anti-inflammatory) meds like ibuprofen before you get to his office.

@AlanRail Wouldn't I need some sort of hook to pull it back down? Beyond that, yes, definitely! That's beautifully simple.

@third rail That's a great looking spacer car! Looks a lot like the scale cars to be honest. It's a bit bigger so hiding electronics in there would be better than the scale car. And thanks. I'm not too enthused to have this done. I've never been under anesthesia thing before. We'll see what happens.

hook or small magnet.

I see @AlanRail. I might give it a shot for kicks. I especially like the idea of using a magnet.

Can't take credit.

Lionel had the idea  before me.

A motorized car is good too. But since you are dumping at a specific location the tilt-up being fixed works a bit better. No motor no shoe.

The motorized car satisfies my enjoyment of tinkering. It might end up a Rube Goldberg project

@AlanRail posted:

Can't take credit.

Lionel had the idea  before me.

A motorized car is good too. But since you are dumping at a specific location the tilt-up being fixed works a bit better. No motor no shoe.

Well, not only that, but a single motor could be used to dump any number of cars at the desired location, with no need to motorize each car. You'd only have to outfit each car with the necessary pivot and contact mechanism with the dump station's activator (solenoid or stepper motor?). If you want to go old-school, you could even arrange a passive trigger mechanism. like the direction-sensitive trigger on my old Marx log dumping car (that particular one uses spring loaded cars which each need to be manually reset, but there's no reason you couldn't just use the activation to tip and then use a spring on each car to restore the upright position instead).

@Steve Tyler posted:

Well, not only that, but a single motor could be used to dump any number of cars at the desired location, with no need to motorize each car.

I could set it up on a crankshaft. That would be interesting.

@BillYo414 posted:

I could set it up on a crankshaft. That would be interesting.

. . . or even more old-school, you could just use an old magnetic decoupler track section to pull down on an iron bar underneath the car, which is connected to a spring-loaded pivot on the hopper. Easy-peasy . . . position the slag car over the decoupler, activate the decoupler, whereupon the bar pulls down and pivots the hopper to dump the load, then the hopper swings back into travel position as soon as the activator button is released. A bit fiddly to set up on each car perhaps, but probably a lot simpler than having to motorize each car, and a *whole* lot simpler than creating a track-conducted motor control and power system!

@Steve Tyler posted:

. . . or even more old-school, you could just use an old magnetic decoupler track section to pull down on an iron bar underneath the car, which is connected to a spring-loaded pivot on the hopper. Easy-peasy . . .  a *whole* lot simpler than creating a track-conducted motor control and power system!

Gee, almost makes you wonder if Lionel was onto something when they came up with that track section and plunger system haha