faller car system

What would you like to know? The cars/trucks/buses have coreless motors and Nicad rechargable cells. They have Ackermann steering with a tiny magnet on an arm that follows an iron wire laid under the road surface. They ran a little fast (scale 60 kmhr) for 1-2 hours on a full charge. The current models contain a reed switch that can stop the vehicle over an electro magnet. (the earliest ones didn't) They are quite expensive. They use bodies from various vehicle manufacturers - Brekina, Viking, Herpa etc.

150mm radius.

Regards, Greg.P.

Hi there

The Hamburg Miniature Wonderland - the largest H0 scale layout in Europe - has implemented an extensive Faller car system in the layout. Though the site is in German, I'm sure you will get a good idea of what you can do with the system looking at the fine pictures. Yes, I know this is not exactly what you ask for, but have a look anyway ;-)

The site:

The Car system gallery: The H0 train gallery: Best regards Padillos

"frank scott" skrev i en meddelelse news:3f1b659f snipped-for-privacy@news.iprimus.com.au...

Good English description:

info off the home page: For other sites in English go to search for the exact phrase "faller car system", and specify English as the language.

An older system I have seen used is to have magnets on an endless belt or chain beneath the road surface, and magnets beneath the vehicles. They are not as smooth running, but will not catch up with each other!

thank you all for your replies.. i now have enough info to decide on a purchase. franko

60 skph is 38 smph. That would be protypical but probably too fast for the abreivated roads on most model railroads.

Eric

Gregory Procter wrote:

What would you like to know? The cars/trucks/buses have coreless motors and Nicad rechargable cells. They have Ackermann steering with a tiny magnet on an arm that follows an iron wire laid under the road surface. They ran a little fast (scale 60 kmhr) for 1-2 hours on a full charge. The current models contain a reed switch that can stop the vehicle over an electro magnet. (the earliest ones didn't) They are quite expensive. They use bodies from various vehicle manufacturers - Brekina, Viking, Herpa etc.

150mm radius.

Gosh, all very technical, I was pretty impressed by the old Minic Motorways system when I was a lad, a wealthy friend had some on his layout. Seem to remember a spring in a slot mechanism but cannot recall the details as I only saw it once and didnt get to play with it.

60 Km/hr is something of a guess as each vehicle is slightly different in speed, but they all seem too fast for my liking. A diode between batteries and motor might help.

Matchbox made the revolving spring in the slot vehicle roadway. It seems only to have been available for a short time, perhaps less than two years. "Minic" made proper slot cars for use with the Tri-ang trains.

Regards, Greg.P.

"Gregory Procter" A diode between batteries

I have seen this suggested before.

why a diode rather than a resistor?

ken " no electrics since "A" level 35 yrs ago" W

oh - i put a cotton pad to quieten a loudspeaker on a particularly annoying Tonka truck - what would have been the correct electrical bit for that?

"Ken Wilson" wrote

A diode will reduce the effective voltage by a more of less fixed amount (about 0.6v) largely independent of the characteristics of the motor. The effect of a resistor depends on the motor and the load conditions and for say a 12v motor drawing maybe 200mA, a suitable resistor would be hard to find i.e. a few tens of Ohms and 1-2 watts. For a 3v motor drawing ~50mA this is less of a consideration but the choice of value is still a bit iffy. And suitable diodes are readily available and cheap and likely to be in any electronically inclined modeller's scrap box e.g. IN4001.

I've used Blu Tack to quieten a keyboard speaker when an obscure word processing program bleeped at me whenever it thought I'd made an error!

For every silicon diode you put in series (in the conducting direction) you drop 0.6v irrespective of the current in the circuit.... 2 diodes in series would be 1.2v and so on. Using a resistor to do the same job would require calculations as to the current flow to determine the value so diodes are a much simpler way of reducing the voltage to the device.

I'm sure John Turner would concur with that solution!

Then I only saw the matchbox type, never knwingly seen the Minic motorway type but when I lived in the states there was a lot of slot car stuff that looked close to OO but never heard of anyone using on a layout. This new stuff does sound interesting though.

A resistor will turn the energy it reduces to the motor directly into heat - there's not much open space inside an enclosed plastic vehicle body to disipate that heat. A diode "blocks" 0.7 volts and turns only a tiny fraction into heat. Also, the voltage lost across a resistor varies with the amount of current, so a vehicle going uphill will lose a disproportionate amount of speed and downhill it will gain lots.

Side cutters. ;-)

Regards, Greg.P.

It's Faller's second attempt - in the 60's/70's they produced their AMS slot cars - sold as Aurora in the US until it was made under licence there. The current Faller road system is excellent for modern image layouts, although one is limited in the number of vehicles per circuit without increasingly complex control methods. (basically one) Price is also a problem. One thing that quickly shows up when you try to fit roadways into a model railway layout is how much space roadways take up compared to railways!

Regards, Greg.P.

Lots of info and pics on Minic Motorways at

It was a complete system with roundabouts, dual carriageways, road/rail sections, cars, trucks and buses.

At a model rail show at Harrogate about 4 years ago, I saw a rail and road layout modelled on mountainous Swiss terrain. An assortment of trucks and buses moved magically along a twisting, hilly road. I assume there was some device behind the scenes, probably using reed switches, to keep the vehicles evenly spaced, and some tinkering required with the vehicles to make them move at roughly the same speed.

The Faller system can use RTR "track", or a layout can be scratch-built using wires buried in the road surface. One modeller has a Leeds tram layout with road vehicles using the Faller system. There are several operating model bus layouts on the UK exhibition circuit, I believe.

Ken That is of course another very good use of diodes as they only pass current in one direction. When used as "buffer protectors" (as you put it) once the unit hits the section of track past the diode >>> It stops because current no longer flows through the units motor until you either put a short circuit around the diode to nullify the effect or reverse the polarity and the unit "backs out". If you have a unit that runs too fast as compared to other units put one or two diodes "back to back" between the track pick-ups & the motor ---- That reduces the voltage to the motor by 0.6v for each pair of diodes thus reducing the speed of that unit only. Very versatile cheap little devils those diodes.

In message , Gregory Procter writes

The best roadway I saw on a model railway layout was a bit of a motorway (three lanes in each direction) with an accident blocking both carriageways. Lots of motor vehicles going nowhere fast.

I wonder if Hornby have any plans to update and re release the Minic system as they have with the trains? I have a large selection of the old Minic stuff, but I don't think it would look quite right with a serious layout... I wish it would,, I' ve got one un-modeled area about 6 x 8 where it would fit nicely, even thought about scratch building some track and weathering the vehicles. Anyone else thought about it? Rob