Your article about the Union Pacific Corp. suing Steamscenes over a calendar was most fascinating. It appears the Union Pacific has no ends or depths [to which] it will descend to display its corporate arrogance and bullying tactics. When these calendars are available at my hobby shop, I will purchase one of each to support Steamscenes.
There was one very important piece of information you did not include in your otherwise well written article. May I have the name and corporate address of the Union Pacific management people or their legal counsel, so I can write them, recommending that they drop their ridiculous lawsuit against Steamscenes?
The corporate management and legal counsel people at Union Pacific need to repair their railroad, not spend time on intimidating calendar publishers.
Clay Hanson
Renton, WA
Union Pacific Railroad, 1400 Douglas Street, Omaha, NE 68179; UP Main Number: 402-544-5000; UP Operator: 888-870-8777; www.uprr.com
Good luck, — Ed.
Is it just me or does the current situation with the Union Pacific Railroad and the model railroading/railfan community seem to be getting more ridiculous by the month?
I model the Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge in HOn3. Does it make any sense at all that any manufacturer of products in this gauge has to pay a cent to Union Pacific when they put a product out which represents a locomotive/rolling stock that was never operated or owned by this Company? Try asking the folks who run the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. The Rio Grande Speed lettering is being replaced by “Cumbres and Toltec” in speed lettering because Union Pacific is making it difficult for this little line to keep the historical accuracy of their equipment.
It is easy enough to understand why a company of any type would want some say in what their name or logo appears on. I can remember seeing outside braced wooden boxcars riding on archbar trucks with the current (mid nineties) CSX colors and logo. Of course this company never operated anything like this during that time or ever as that type of truck was outlawed during the 1920s. It is Union Pacific’s right to see that their trademarks are used in a proper manner as one would expect. But to extend this to corporate identities that no longer exist?
The Rio Grande does not exist anymore, nor the Southern Pacific, T & P, MoPac, C&NW, or any of the many railroads, both small and large that existed over the past 150 years or so whose identities have ended up under the umbrella of the Union Pacific railroad. I find this to be disturbing to say the least that some big corporation expects a cottage industry to pay out for the right to produce a model of a car that ran on some long forgotten short line somewhere, on a railroad whose tracks may have been pulled up years ago, that is now a part of Union Pacific.
I have seen several photographs by Niles Huxtable, I own a book or two written by the man. I will look for and buy a copy of his calendar just to thumb my nose at Uncle Pete. Hopefully I can find one. Because of this ridiculous lawsuit, I am planning on doing the following: not to buy anymore commercial products that are “licensed Union Pacific products” and when forced to do so, such as a locomotive project, to buy an undecorated model and use decals, paints and whatever detail parts are needed to produce my needed model. In short, go back to what we all did years ago before everything was ready to run. That way if I am still having to pay some big corporation (which should be out there trying to provide the transportation of goods, instead of creating needless lawsuits trying to chisel at most a few dollars) once all things are considered, from a model railroad/railfan product manufacturer, it will be as little money as possible.
Robert Stewart Sayes
Tallahassee, FL
Just received the Aug. MRN yesterday and read the article about Steamscenes. I model SP and have been buying their calendars for years. I have never been in doubt with whom I was dealing with and what I was buying. I have many things I could say about UP, none of which should appear in print. Needless to say, when I buy my new calendar this year, I’m going to send him an extra $10 for antibiotics against the great yellow peril.
Patrick Stanley
West Chester, OH
To “Thinking of DCC’s” John Sipple:
You stated about the “Playable Whistle” capability built into the Digitrax DT400 throttle, “…even going so far as to tell me to set Option 3 to X80. Dunno what that does to the other settings on 3.”
Instead of putting x80 in, add x80 to whatever other value is already in there and you’ll have all the same settings plus the playable whistle.
Even though you don’t have a sound unit that can comply with the button pressure changes, you can see it work. After putting the x80+ in option 3, select any address. Normally when you give the loco throttle, there’s a bar graph that goes up and down according to the percentage of throttle given. But with x80 added to option three, it converts to a pressure gauge when pressing FN2. Try it and watch the bar graph go up and down (actually, sideways) as you press harder and harder, then less and less. The pitch of the horn/whistle is supposed to be changing as that bar graph changes (I guess we’ll find out how well that works when we get a Tsunami or SoundFX unit). When you release the FN2 button, the bar graph will return to a throttle graph.
Loy Spurlock
Loy’s Toys
Wesley, AR
The July 2005 issue of Model Railroad News has a letter from Lowell L. Turner on the subject of Lighting Business Cars. I’ll provide some comments and recommendations, since I know enough about this topic to be dangerous.
First, I strongly claim that DCC AND LAMPS DO NOT BELONG IN THE SAME ROOM. Now that “white” LEDs with no blue tint are readily available, there is probably no remaining application anywhere in model railroading for lamps! This is particularly true for DCC! (How’s that for a broad statement?)
Why? Because to use a lamp properly with DCC, you really need to select a voltage-dropping resistor to fit the application. But the variables in the application are the lamp current at rated voltage, the desired brightness level, and the available voltage. In my experience, lamps rated at 1.5 volts and nominally 15 mA draw anything from 12 to 18 mA at rated voltage. Assuming you had only one fixed voltage source, what resistor do you use? Clearly, that differs from lamp to lamp, even if the lamps all come out of the same bag. Don’t even dream about connecting two or more of these lamps in series without first matching their currents at rated voltage.
What voltage is available? That depends on the brand of DCC system, the scale setting (e.g., N vs. HO vs. G), whether the lamp is connected to the track, across the motor, or through a decoder output. I’ve seen numbers from 18 volts to 10 volts in DCC systems — there is no standard, even for a given scale.
If LEDs are used instead of lamps, a current limiting resistor is always needed, but the voltage doesn’t matter much. LEDs should outlive the user if used properly, and their APPARENT brightness change in response to track voltage changes is nowhere near as great as for lamps. Their current can be extremely low while supplying amazing brightness, meaning LED and resistor heating are not serious concerns, total supply current is very low, and preventing flickering in track-powered rolling stock is much easier. Also, LEDs can offer a real size advantage relative to even the smallest lamps.
If Lowell will agree to use LEDs rather than lamps, most of the issues raised in his letter and your response disappear. He still needs current limiting resistors, but the voltage level issue becomes simply “Is there enough?” rather than “How much is there, is that too much, and will something get fried?”
Regardless of scale and available voltage, if Lowell simply connects a few LEDs in series, and adds an appropriate current limiting resistor in series, he can have any combination of steady lights he wants, regardless of quantity and color of the LEDs or the source of power (Analog or DCC). (Some readers might suggest adding a 1N4001 or other diode to the series string as a precaution if the input power is AC instead of a decoder output, and that certainly wouldn’t hurt, but don’t forget that the 1N4001 will drop about 0.7 volt.)
Lowell will need to know the available voltage as well as the color of the LEDs. The LED color will tell him the LED’s typical voltage drop. Using that info and the amount of available voltage, he can determine how many LEDs can be connected in each series string. Once he specifies the desired brightness level he can estimate the needed resistor value.
For example, Lowell said he has a little more than 15 volts on the rails. Let’s assume he wants distributed golden white interior lights, two steady golden white ditch lights, and two steady red marker lights for his business cars. Let’s further assume that eight LEDs will give adequately distributed interior lights, and that an initial current of 3 mA is appropriate for all of the LEDs. Finally, let’s assume that Lowell wants to use a decoder to control all of these LEDs, and the decoder function output voltage drop is 2 volts when that output is on. We can assure Lowell that efficient golden white LEDs drop about 3 volts each at about 3 mA, while efficient red LEDs drop about 2 volts each at 3 mA.
Lowell should make two series strings of four golden white LEDs. Each string will drop about 12 volts. At the decoder output, Lowell will have a little more than 13 volts, so a resistor has to get rid of the excess 1+volt. What resistor drops 1 volt at 3 mA (0.003 Amp)? Ohm’s Law tells us R= V / I = 1 / 0.003 = 333 ohms. Lowell should connect a 333 ohm resistor in series with those four LEDs, connect that string to his decoder, connect another identical string in parallel to the same place (to get a total of eight interior lights), and that should do it. Note that each series string will draw only 3 mA.
For markers and ditch lights, there are two options: connect the markers and ditch lights in series together, or connect two independent circuits, one for ditch lights and one for markers. To connect them ALL in series, the two red and two white LEDs collectively will drop about 10 volts at 3 mA, so a resistor is needed to drop the remaining 3 volts. Simple math and Ohm’s Law tells us the value should be 3 V / 0.003 Amp = 1,000 ohms.
So now everything is all sweetness and light, right? Maybe. What if Lowell really wants lights that don’t flicker as the important shippers in his business cars are reading their Wall Street Journals? With LED lighting, antiflicker circuits are available, but that’s another subject. Now here’s the shameless plug: Richmond Controls offers all of this stuff with antiflicker circuitry ready to run.
Jim Hinds
Richmond Controls
Richmond, TX
To “Grade Crossing’s” Bill Cawthon:
Got a buzz out of folk that stalk those outside the pure scale regime. My On30 sports an eclectic viewpoint. Put S vehicles over on the end with the S station. Put O on, … and so on. Also try a John Deere dealer. Some of them have a nice gamut of scale ranges, some marked as 1/64, etc. My farm runs JD models and is served by Dog Bluff & Knotty Branch Railway in Galivants Ferry, SC. Thanks for the variety in MRN.
C. Don Copeland
Galivant’s Ferry, SC
I plan to work with a few railroad scales in my columns and reviews. Got a nice 1:48 biplane review coming up and a 1:53 modern Kenworth in the works, though that one might be a bit too new for your layout. Thanks for writing. I appreciate it. — Bill
Your Garden Scales article (July 2005) was excellent, but I have a marketing outlook that you did not cover. My father, Nat, had a world view of scales and in England the larger OO scale vs. HO was a non-issue, and the English have a very detailed hobby mentality. When we began in G Gauge we wanted a distinctively American look and Lionel’s early Standard Gauge dominated America for the best part of 50 years. Thus we chose the 1/29th Standard Gauge for a scale.
However, 1 Gauge track had been in existence for 100 years, and it would have been economic suicide to make a new scale track. If OO in England was hugely successful, then why not 1/29th on One Gauge track?
Frankly, high rail code 332 track is necessary on all but a few layouts in Southern climates without frost upheavals and/or areas of heavy rainfall washouts. Thus a high rail track with a 1 Gauge width is logical and frankly represents the vast majority of usage in the U.S. So, if customers use a funky brass-colored rail and a high rail track, how much worse is it to be 10 percent different in gauge?
Having a great scale model and a Stainless Steel track with the correct silver color is far more important than a hard-to-see gauge difference.
This was our outlook when we began our G Gauge line and though not scientifically accurate in measurement, it’s a practical way of doing what works best for most. Frankly, it has worked in the real world of garden railroading, and the scale-only outlook will continue as well for those so inclined. It’s a free marketplace and to each his own.
Lewis Polk
Aristo-Craft Trains
Irvington, NJ
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