Model Railroad Sizes By Scale

These pictures were taken from a display at the Hostlers Model Railroad Museum in Ogden, Utah. Hopefully they givn some relative sizes for those that are unfamiliar with the various scales. The signs for HO, N and Z scales are all the same size so you can get an idea of model sizes. The signs for G,O and S are slightly larger but you can still get some relative size information from them by watching how the scales grow in size relative to the signs.

All of these are shown from smaller to larger. SO that you can get a starting point for the size, the Z SCALE sign is 3 inches high.

    

Pick the size you like the most and above all - have fun!

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New ESU youTube Videos

ESU has picked up where Matt Herman left off. They have started a new series of videos concerning the LokProgrammer and the CabControl on a youTube channel. They look good and go into depth concerning various topics that have been constant questions on the forums.

The channel is located here.

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Much Clearer Figures for This Author's Readers

Several readers of the author's articles have commented that the figures in the articles are sometimes fuzzy and hard to read. First, there is only so much room to put these figures into the actual article. Second, if you would like a larger, much clearer picture of a figure click on the figure once. You will be presented with a blown-up representation of the image that is much clearer for reading and occupies the entire window you opened it in.

I hope this helps everyone!

By the way, this feature has always been there.
 

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ESU - Keeping Drive Hold And Brakes From Interfering With Each Other

This discussion is at the request of some members of the club I am a member of, the Hostlers Model Railroad Club of Ogden Utah. Several members have issues with competing brakes in addition to the Drive Hold function. This includes the Independent brake and the Automatic (Train) brake. The issues boil down to their engine not moving after applying throttle even though the engine sound revs as it should.

There's more than just the brakes that can cause this problem and that is discussed here but this discussion is limited to preventing the brakes and Drive Hold from interferring with each other.

First and foremost if Drive Hold (F9) or either the Independent or Automatic brake is applied the engine is not going to move. If you do not have the Automatic brake installed and functioning, how to do that is described here. So for purposes of this discussion we have Drive Hold on F9 (default), the Independent brake on F10 (default) and the Automatic brake on F12 (varies by wherever the user installs it, the author does not use the dimmer function so F12). The base configuration is shown in figure 1. This is on the function mapping sheet of the decoder pane.

Figure 1 Inital brake configuration

In essence this becomes a logic problem. By that I mean if any of these three functions are on we do not want to allow either of the other two to be turned on. So look at Drive Hold. If we want to turn it on then F10 and F12 cannot be on so first we click on the F9 drop down, scroll to F10, the Independent brake and select Off. This is shown in figure 2.

 

Figure 2 Disallow F10

Notice how the entry for F9 added not F10. Do the same for F12, the Train brake. and you'll have what is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 Disallow F12

Now the Conditions column says turn on Drive Hold if F9 is pressed and both F10 and F12 are NOT pressed. This means you can't turn on Drive Hold is either brake is on.

The next step is to go F10, the Independent brake, and turn off both F9, Drive Hold, and F12, the Train Brake. Lastly, go to F12 and turn off F9 and F10. Once you're done you will have prevented either brake or Drive Hold from being engaged if any of the others are already engaged. 

The author has even seen some individuals prevent F10 and F12 from starting the prime mover but that can be disconcerting when your prime mover won't start so this is not recommended.

<Note>

ESU has acknowledged that there is a bug in the firmware of v5 decoders that will occasionally set the Independent brake, F10, with no indication of it being engaged. So if your engine will not move and you are sure that Drive Hold and the Train brake are off, press F10 once or twice and see if it moves. This has happened to friends of the author recently. ESU is actively working on a fix for this.

Have fun!
 

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LokSound v5 Decoder Brake Function Configuration

Apoorva, the IndianRailModeler from the groups.io forum for LokSound decoders, recently replied to an email concerning brake function configuration for v5 LokSound decoders. It is a good summary explanation of the configuration. The discussion below concerns the Brake functions settings located at the bottom of the Brake Settings sheet of the Decoder pane for the appropriate Sound file for your engine. It is shown in figure 1.

All three braking functions in Loksound 5 decoders work the same way. All three functions allow the user to set a deceleration rate by setting the appropriate value in CV’s 179, 180 and 181 (for Brake 1, Brake 2 and Brake 3 respectively). 

<Author's Note>
Brake 1 is the Independent Brake, Brake 2 the Automatic Brake and Brake 3 the Dynamic Brake. All three are installed by default in sound files, The only issue is brake 2. It is installed by default under Function 30. Most throttles can't reach that high since they only have 28 functions available. There are exceptions, e.g. the Android app Engine Driver. Brake 2 can be moved to a reachable function and that is explained here.

Figure 1 Brake function settings 

The braking rate CV value reduces the deceleration time set by CV4 based on the following formula:

Time to stop from max speed in seconds = (255 - CV)/255 * (CV4*0.879) where CV is the value set in CV179 or CV180 or CV181.

Associated with each brake function is a Max Speed CV, ie. CV181, CV182 and CV183 for Brake1, Brake2 and Brake3 respectively. When a brake function is activated, the decoder ignores the throttle speed step setting and sets an internal Speed to the value set in CV182, 183 or 184 depending on which of the 3 brake functions is activated. If the internal speed set by the throttle speed step is more than the target value in the Max Speed CV, the locomotive will slow down as per the respective brake setting.

Thus CV’s 182, 183 and 184 specify the speed (in terms of throttle Speed Steps) at which the braking will be deactivated once the speed is reached. The locomotive will continue at this constant speed as set in CV’s 182, 183 once it is reached. 

An example to illustrate the effect of CV’s 182 for Brake 1 is as follows. CV’s 183 and 184 for Brake 2 and Brake 3 function in the same manner. Assume CV182 [Brake 1] is set to 18 (equivalent to an internal Speed of 36 or Speed Step 4/28 in a linear speed curve). If the locomotive is running at a speed equivalent to Speed Step 10 (or any Speed Step higher than 4) and the Brake 1 function is activated, the locomotive will slow down up to the internal speed = 36 and hold it’s speed even while the Brake 1 function is still active (braking sound will still be playing) provided the throttle is maintained higher than speed step 4. If the throttle is reduced below speed step 4, the locomotive speed will decelerate again based on the Braking setting upto that throttle speed. Alternately, if the locomotive is already moving at a throttle setting of less than Max speed setting (ie less than speed step 4 in this example), invoking Brake 1 will have no effect on the speed, as long as the throttle setting is not changed. If the throttle is reduced to less than the locomotive speed, braking will be initiated till the speed corresponding to the new throttle setting is reached. If on the other hand, the throttle is increased to any speed step greater than 4, the locomotive will accelerate up to to the speed set by CV182, ie. speed step 4, and hold there. No further increase in speed will occur.

To be able to bring the locomotive to a complete stop when a brake function is activated, irrespective of the throttle setting, the associated CV 182, 183 or 184 has to be set to Zero or one has to reduce the throttle down to zero. If there are multiple brake functions active at the same time, the Requested Speed will be set to the lowest brake max speed control CV setting among the active brake functions.

This functionality of the Brake function gives the possibility to build braking control logics which would allow for two effects:

1. Use the Max Speed CV as a Speed regulator to simulate a train going down hill at a constant speed either under brake application or dynamic brake application
2. Use the throttle to function as a braking lever by setting CV182 (or 183 or 184) to 126 (maximum value). Now the slowing down of the locomotive is controlled by the throttle, and allows the user to select upto which speed to slow down to by simply setting the throttle to the desired speed step. Note: braking sound will still be active until the brake function button is active, and to get the appropriate braking sound, a slight modification will need to be made to the braking soundslot.

I am sure users will/can think of other uses of this feature.

Hope this helps explain the braking function.

Apoorva 

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