# uncoupling



## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

I am using a UCS uncoupler track and was wondering , do you need to manually pull the train apart when pressing the button? If so that is lame. When you have alot of cars there would be too much force on the coupler to open and push the cars away.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

johnfin said:


> I am using a UCS uncoupler track and was wondering , do you need to manually pull the train apart when pressing the button? If so that is lame. When you have alot of cars there would be too much force on the coupler to open and push the cars away.


Do you have the UCS or the #6019?

I ride over the spot and hit the button and the cars disconnect?
The rest keeps going.


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

It sounds as if john is describing the act of disconnecting while at a standstill---dropping a string of cars after backing into a siding, for example.


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*uncoupler*

Mine uses the power of the track for the electro magnet so you cant run over it to disconnect(hence needs lots of voltsge). Separate power is the only way I know to do that and since the coil is connected to the tracks that would be hard to do. I found that the magnet has to be aligned with the coupler too for it to work.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> It sounds as if john is describing the act of disconnecting while at a standstill---dropping a string of cars after backing into a siding, for example.


Look at my round house and you see the 6019's? One on each side.
I back them in and when I pull out I hit the button and it disconnects?

Maybe I am missing something in his question?


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

The way I understand it the thumb unlocks when you press the button. The engine does the moving. It only relocks when cars press together.


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Got it: great looking layout, by the way!

Since I don't run Lionel, I don't have the real answer about your couplings. However, it occurs to me that, by swapping the uncoupler-track with the straight track to it's 10 o'clock on the same line, you could do a moving uncouple and drop the rolling stock before reaching the turntable. That circumvents the need for the coupler to push the train backwards.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

johnfin said:


> Mine uses the power of the track for the electro magnet so you cant run over it to disconnect(hence needs lots of voltsge). Separate power is the only way I know to do that and since the coil is connected to the tracks that would be hard to do. I found that the magnet has to be aligned with the coupler too for it to work.



I posted the last one and didn't see this.

My sidings are all set up with separate power switches. But they still get their power from the track.

When I back the train into the siding as I am pulling out I hit and hold the button as the train pulls back onto the round table's bridge, when the car gets over the magnet it disconnects.

What are you using yours for? For sidings?


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> Got it: great looking layout, by the way!
> 
> Since I don't run Lionel, I don't have the real answer about your couplings. However, it occurs to me that, by swapping the uncoupler-track with the straight track to it's 10 o'clock on the same line, you could do a moving uncouple and drop the rolling stock before reaching the turntable. That circumvents the need for the coupler to push the train backwards.


Little by little the layout is changing. That's an older picture.


However, it occurs to me that, by swapping the uncoupler-track with the straight track to it's 10 o'clock on the same line, you could do a moving uncouple and drop the rolling stock before reaching the turntable. That circumvents the need for the coupler to push the train backwards.[/QUOTE]
HUH??


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*uncoupler*

my UCS uncoupler only works with full throttle, pulling away from it would loose the distance to the magnet. Only way I can see you do that is by running a separate power supply the electro magnet.


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

The O-27 UCS tracks have the wires from the controller soldered to the rails and coil. Turn the track section upside down and find the wire that goes to the center rail. Unsolder this wire from the center rail and wire it to a fixed voltage tap on your transformer. The instructions at http://www.thortrains.net/manualx.htm show you how to do it for an O-31 UCS, and the circuits are the same so you should be able to figure it out from the diagrams for the O-31 UCS. 

Bruce Baker


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*Old stuff*

Thats fine and dandy if I were using a transformer from the 30's, ie the directions are from that vintage. I am using a modern transformer, 2 lug variable. I need to know to connect aux power to the O UCS.


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

If you have a transformer that has only two terminals, you don't have a fixed voltage available. Get a bigger transformer or another transformer for the UCS track. You could use an old transformer for the UCS track and keep your modern transformer.

To use a vintage transformer with your UCS track, connect one terminal of the vintage transformer to the outer rail, and the other to the hot wire going to the UCS. Adjust the voltage of the transformer until the UCS works the way you want it to. 

Bruce Baker


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

servoguy said:


> The O-27 UCS tracks have the wires from the controller soldered to the rails and coil. Turn the track section upside down and find the wire that goes to the center rail. Unsolder this wire from the center rail and wire it to a fixed voltage tap on your transformer. The instructions at http://www.thortrains.net/manualx.htm show you how to do it for an O-31 UCS, and the circuits are the same so you should be able to figure it out from the diagrams for the O-31 UCS.
> 
> Bruce Baker



Here's a picture to boot. The red shows the center rail connection points.










This is from the milk car thread.


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

big ed said:


> Little by little the layout is changing. That's an older picture.
> 
> 
> However, it occurs to me that, by swapping the uncoupler-track with the straight track to it's 10 o'clock on the same line, you could do a moving uncouple and drop the rolling stock before reaching the turntable. That circumvents the need for the coupler to push the train backwards.


HUH??[/QUOTE]

Ed,

Start with the assumption I don't know what I'm talking about---I don't run Lionel. However, he earlier described the coupler having to shove the train backward to allow the coupler to disconnect. That can only happen if you are sitting still.
His uncoupler is immediately before the turntable. That suggested he wanted to stop, disconnect, roll just the engine onto the turntable, and rotate to get it out of line with the rest of the train and presumably, bring out another engine. 
My suggestion was to move his disconnect track back from the turntable by one track segment. That would allow him to disconnect while still slowly approaching the turntable: coupler would be able to open easily instead of trying to shove the train backward, if that was the problem.
Again, I'm probably way off base, but that was an easy solution to what I thought he was describing.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> HUH??


Ed,

Start with the assumption I don't know what I'm talking about---I don't run Lionel. However, he earlier described the coupler having to shove the train backward to allow the coupler to disconnect. That can only happen if you are sitting still.
His uncoupler is immediately before the turntable. That suggested he wanted to stop, disconnect, roll just the engine onto the turntable, and rotate to get it out of line with the rest of the train and presumably, bring out another engine. 
My suggestion was to move his disconnect track back from the turntable by one track segment. That would allow him to disconnect while still slowly approaching the turntable: coupler would be able to open easily instead of trying to shove the train backward, if that was the problem.
Again, I'm probably way off base, but that was an easy solution to what I thought he was describing.[/QUOTE]

If you are pushing the car into the siding it won't uncouple because your PUSHING the car and you will be not unhooking as you are pushing the coupler, in order to make it work you have to be PULLING the car over it to work. 
The huh was for "to it's 10 o'clock on the same line", <=huh? 10 o'clock?


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Oh! I understand, now. Think of the center of the pic---the turntable---as the center of the clock. The decoupler is at the 10 o'clock position in relation to the turntable; the straight track I was describing was 10 o'clock of the decoupler: "to it's 10 o'clock on the same line". Elementary, my dear Watson!


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

As Einstein might tout ... "Time is relative, my dear Reckers ... time is relative!"


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Speaking of Einstien and relativity...he's the only person I'm aware of who was married to both his first and second cousins...at the same time. Now, THAT is relativity!


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> Oh! I understand, now. Think of the center of the pic---the turntable---as the center of the clock. The decoupler is at the 10 o'clock position in relation to the turntable; the straight track I was describing was 10 o'clock of the decoupler: "to it's 10 o'clock on the same line". Elementary, my dear Watson!


As Sherlock Holmes would say,
Well DR Watson,.... I have to say the reason the ten o'clock was confusing is if you look close my turntable it has 24 positions. 



Just like the clocks I have around my house .
Heres one of them. 












So therefore the 10:00 position is down on the lower right at where the switch comes in.

Your position indicated would be the 22:00 position.
Thats what confused me

Elementary, my dear Watson!

Your welcome Mr Watson.:laugh:


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

:hah:That would be an applicable argument, Ed, were we at sea. *L*

However, the photo was an ariel view, and the "Twelve O'Clock High" relative-direction system originated with the air corps during WW1: no doubt you remember that from your experiences then, in France! However, I digress. Let me clarify.

"When Mickey's doing the YMCA song, the track I'm referring to is under his right elbow on "Y"!":laugh::laugh::laugh:


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> :hah:That would be an applicable argument, Ed, were we at sea. *L*
> 
> However, the photo was an ariel view, and the "Twelve O'Clock High" relative-direction system originated with the air corps during WW1: no doubt you remember that from your experiences then, in France! However, I digress. Let me clarify.
> 
> "When Mickey's doing the YMCA song, the track I'm referring to is under his right elbow on "Y"!":laugh::laugh::laugh:



HUH? Mickey who?

# There are 30,982 people in the U.S. with the first name Mickey.
# Statistically the 1057th most popular first name.
# 80 percent of people with the first name Mickey are male.

Mickey Mantle?


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

"Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M - I - C - ..."

Oh, screw it ... you guys are just plain WHACKY! :laugh:

TJ


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Ed....all 30,982 Mickeys have their right elbow in the same place. Honest!


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

Reckers said:


> Ed....all 30,982 Mickeys have their right elbow in the same place. Honest!



Not if they are missing an arm!


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Not necessarily true, Ed. After all....they could be missing their left arm!!!


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

How does the uncouple feature differ from the unload feature on the UCS track?


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

*Constant voltage for a UCS*

If you wire up the UCS as described in the Lionel manual, all you are doing is removing the power from the 3rd rail and wiring it to a voltage terminal on your transformer which is separate from the terminal supplying power to the track. All the buttons for the UCS are still wired as they were before. Check the drawings on the manual: http://www.thortrains.net/manualx.htm

From the picture which was posted, the wires are from left to right, center rail, left hand 4th rail, right hand 4th rail, outside rail. It appears that there is an error in the comments. The red circle near the magnet is not the center rail but is the outer rail. I don't have an O-27 UCS handy to check what I am saying, but you can just examine the UCS to determine what that circle is connected to. It goes to one side of the coil, and the other side of the coil goes to the RH 4th rail which is hot when the uncouple button is pressed. 

Unsolder the wire that goes to the center rail from the controller and add a wire to it and attach it to a terminal on your transformer. I recommend a variable voltage terminal so you can adjust the voltage to make the UCS operate as desired.

To answer another question, for uncouple both 4th rails and the magnet are energized. For unload, one of the 4th rails is hot and the other is connected to the outer rails. This will then energize a coil on the operating car.

Bruce Baker


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## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

That was an elegant description, Bruce, and the time you spent on it is appreciated. That noted....using two rails sure is a lot simpler!!!!


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

*Two rails*

I think two rail operation has a number of challenges, the primary one being reversing loops. Crossings can also be a bit of a problem. When I do a Lionel layout, it usually has a lot of reversing loops and crossings (crossovers). My layouts don't resemble real railroads, so I classify myself as a toy train operator, not a model railroader. My last layout was on the carpet and had 50 022 switches. 40 were on the mainline, and were wired so the train would operate them using the non-derailing feature. It took 22 minutes for the train to go around the entire layout. My primary interest in toy trains is to get everything working perfectly and then just watch it run. So far, I have never had a "permanent" layout or built any scenery. I would like to one day, but it hasn't happened yet. 
Bruce Baker


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

servoguy said:


> It took 22 minutes for the train to go around the entire layout.




My kids run our HO layout in 22 SECONDS! :laugh:


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*schemer*

Bruce, how does this look? Push the button and both the show rail and magnet will energize. I could uncouple or unload with the press of a button.


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

*UCS wiring*

If you wire the UCS as you have shown, it will uncouple but not unload. I recommend you retain the Lionel controller. There is no reason to make something from parts unless you want to fit it into your control panel.

Bruce Baker


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

*22 minutes*

The reason it took my train 22 minutes to go over the entire layout is the way I had the switches wired together in pairs. Each pair of switches was a flip-flop, and the switches made a state machine with potentially 2^20 states or about a million states (1024^2). I don't think the layout actually achieved this number of states, and I never counted them. Anyway, as the train went around the layout, it kept throwing switches and taking a new route. I always found it interesting to watch a train do this, even though it is not what a real railroad would ever do.
Bruce Baker


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*schematic*

Bruce, I just made that schematic to understand how the system works. Can you take my pic and add the unload feature so that I can understand it. Thanks.


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

You cannot wire the left and right control rails together. For uncouple, you want power on both the left and right control rails and on the coil. For unload, you want power on the left control rails and ground on the right control rails. The power and ground are picked up through the sliding shoes. The sliding shoes are wired to a coil on the operating car, one end of the coil to one shoe and the other end to the other shoe. 

To make this work, you need two double pole, single throw, normally open, switches, one for uncouple and one for unload. The uncouple switch has power from your green transformer wired to one side of both contacts. The other side of these contacts goes to the control rails. The unload switch has power from your green transformer wired to one side of only one of the contacts, and the other contact is wired to ground. The other sides of both contacts are wired to the left and right control rails, respectively. The coil should be wired to whichever control rail is hot only when the uncouple switch is operated. 

If you press both buttons at once, you will short the output of the green transformer. This is also true for the Lionel controller.

Bruce Baker


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*Shoes*

I guess I need to understand how the shoes work. I thought that the shoe went to one side of A/C (one side of coil)and and the other side of the coupler coil went to the train chassis which is the outer rail. It would get a/c and wouldnt care which way the train was traveling. I looked at one of my engines and I believe thats how it is wired. Do we really need to talk about ground and power when talking about a/c? What I think you are saying is that there are 2 shoes and both are required to get a/c to the couplers to work, the 3 lionel rail dont make the couplers work, right? So for unloading what is power and ground?


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

Let's call the outside rail "ground" and the center rail "hot" or "power". Similarly, in your picture, for the green transformer, call the side connected to the outside rail "ground" and the side connected to the switch "hot". Don't be concerned about the power being AC. If it were DC, it would work exactly the same way. 

One side of each coupler coil is connected to the frame of the truck which is ground, and the other side goes to the shoe. This is true for both couplers. The couplers are independent of each other. So when you make both control rails "hot," both couplers will uncouple if both shoes are in contact with the control rails. If only one shoe is in contact with the control rails, only that coupler will operate. 

For an operating coil to operate something like a dump car, one end of the coil is connected to one of the shoes and the other end of the coil is connected to the other shoe. Therefore, to energize the coil, one shoe has to be grounded and one shoe has to be hot. It doesn't matter which is hot and which is ground. The coil doesn't know the difference. The coupler that is connected to the hot shoe is also going to operate. 

In your drawing, the side of the green and read transformers that is connected to the outside rail is "ground." The other side is hot, but the hot for the red transformer and the hot for the green transformer are not the same and should never be connected together. If the UCS is wired up correctly, the red hot and the green hot will never be connected together.

Bruce Baker


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

servoguy said:


> The reason it took my train 22 minutes to go over the entire layout is the way I had the switches wired together in pairs. Each pair of switches was a flip-flop, and the switches made a state machine with potentially 2^20 states or about a million states (1024^2). ... as the train went around the layout, it kept throwing switches and taking a new route.
> Bruce Baker



What an incredibly cool, ingenius thing to do! Near limitless possibilities. Very clever, Bruce ... very clever.

TJ


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

TJ,
There is more to it than what I told you so far. At Skycraft, I bought some stepper switches. 12 VDC. I wired one of the stepper coils to an isolated outside rail and a DC power supply made with a 1032 transformer and a diode and a capacitor. Every time the train went over the track section with the isolated outside rail, it would advance the stepper one position. This would throw a switch ahead of the train so it would take one of two different paths. The stepper didn't give a regular pattern, but a simple random pattern due to the way I had it wired. This increased the total time to get around the layout by maybe a factor of 4. Then I put a car on the train that had dirty wheels. When it went over the track section with the insulated outside rail, it would step the stepper switch many positions and end up at essentially a random position. Therefore, the time for the train to complete a run around the layout became infinite. The switch created a random sequence of ones and zeros. I have a few of the stepper switches, but they are apparently totally out of production. Skycraft has a few more but the coils are higher voltage than the ones I have. I was thinking about putting a few more steppers into the layout, but I never got around to it. It would have made a really cool layout with the train going every which way. 

The trick with the switches is in the Lionel operating manual at http://www.thortrains.net/manualx.htm. They only show two switches wired together, so it isn't obvious from the manual what the possibilities are. I'll try to post some pictures of my layout soon. 

I have been doing this for 30 years or so. Up until recently, I had only 8 022 switches. Now I have about 86, and I can get more for $7.50 ea with the lanterns, controllers, and power plugs. If I get more space, I am probably going to build a layout with mostly O-31 track with maybe some O-72 on the outside so I can run my Williams Challenger. I have a MTH 2-8-8-2 that will run on O-31 because both engines swivel. However, the Challenger is built like a real loco and only the front engine swivels. 

Bruce Baker


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*wiring*

ok, I think I am getting the shoe wiring, thanks. Schematic shown will never connect the transformers together. The UCS wiring "being correct" will not match the owners manual because they are using a center tap transformer for a fixed voltage and I am using 2 transformers.


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*Short*

Does this look like a short or what.


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## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

NO, logic dictates that the transformer is connected to the center and outer rail. What you show is a complete circuit ( somehow I have my doubts). Your controller has to have a ground and power also. The transformer connections as shown can be confusing. I really never figured how the controllers work either. Your path may be wrong.
Does it work?


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## johnfin (Nov 28, 2009)

*correction*

Ok, I think that black blob on the switches is an insulator hence it would not short across the secondary of the transformer.


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## servoguy (Jul 10, 2010)

johnfin,
The black thing is indeed an insulator. The controller is correct as shown. The left button is "uncouple" and the right button is "unload."
Bruce Baker


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