Hi everyone, Tinman here with another new item from of our "let's see if we can make it more better" bag of tricks item. This sale includes 2 Lionel O gauge accessory tracks with a new twist. One of the tracks is the typical eye ball model which does the uncoupling. The other track was designed to uncouple tracks that did not have the metal plate attached to the trucks. Instead they used additional shoes on the cars which would activate the uncouple cycle.
Our first innovation was a pair op uncoupler/unloader tracks with toggle switches instead of pushbuttons. This was our our answer to a sensible replacement control for Lionel's original Remote Control unloader/uncoupler controller. Lionel made some really terrific toys and controls, but the original 2 pushbutton control was not one of them. Why? because a lot of those wonderful toys Lionel came up with require quite some time to cycle thru. Plus the original controls break a lot. So now you can turn them on and sit back and enjoy them. Pretty cool eh? EXCEPT!! we forgot about probably the most popular action car Lionel ever came out with, the legendary milk car followed by the cattle car, coal and log dumpers and a few more. These great toys do not like being left activated. They want an instantaneous pulse from a push button. So You now have the option of activating the action cars with a power pulse or switch them on till you turn them off. The oversized LED's will light up when the action switches are turned on. Pretty cool eh? Actually the change came from one of our smarter than me customers who told me the issues with the controller and the milk car....
Soooo back to the drawing board! This new control is our answer to accommodate both the needs of a pulse operation as well as a toggle for longer action toys. My new friend also enlightened me with an age old issue with some of the action cars, specifically the cattle, and milk cars. It seems that these cars are very sensitive to control voltage. Too much voltage, and the milk cars will be tossed so hard they flip over, not cool the dairy was complaining about that. Too little voltage and they won't complete their cycle. So what is the proper operating voltage? (you really didn't think it would be that easy did you?) The answer is especially with the milk car, it depends on the individual car. I've seen 10 volts on some cars, and others want 14... So if you have a zw or similar transformer where you can control the accessory power can be controlled, no problem. If you have however a kw or many other transformers you won't be so lucky, their accessory powers are fixed from the factory with a specific voltage. Soooooo? Over the years we have collected a large number of the old little "cube" transformers. They were very popular with O27 sets back when. They only have 2 screws for output, no whistle control, but did have a variable power output to control engine speeds. We have a bunch of these, mostly black, but a few red ones, and even a couple of green ones. We are offering these as an accessory add on for cheap, just in case you may need it. The idea is to power up just the accessory tracks with these little transformers so you can adjust the voltage to exactly works best for you.
These new controls require an easy to do modification to the eyeball track. Directions are of course included.
As always, this item will come with full instructions and as always we are available for questions or concerns.
Anyway here it is for you, thanks for reading this rather lengthy description, but in case you didn't know it before,. we really do enjoy this business so occasionally we like to have some fun too.
Best wishes my friends, Stay safe please and always remember
You don't grow old from playing with trains, you grow old when you stop playing with trains!