Piko Taurus: adding power buffer and red taillights

The Piko Taurus locomotive in G-scale I bought earlier this year is without any doubt a very good product. A conversion to DCC and adding sound functionality made the model even better and allowed me to enjoy it fully on my garden layout. Still, I wanted to give it a little bit of a personal touch and improve it further. That's how I came up with the following two extra modifications...

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Modification #1 introduces a power buffer in a similar way I did it before for my Piko BR80 (more info here). The goal is to make the locomotive ride smoothly despite any dirt that could (and will!) accumulate on the track. Taurus is a large vehicle, so I have more freedom in choosing a capacitor that will compensate for any power disruptions. The largest - reasonably priced - I could find was 22000uF / 25V element. Its capacity is basically twice of what I added to my BR80 in the past.

The electrical part of the installation is very easy - the capacitor's pins need to be connected to the "plus" and "gnd" sockets of the decoder. And it's all described very nicely in the manual. Physical installation seems to be trivial, too, with all the empty space inside the Taurus...

...well, not exactly. The photo above shows my initial placement of the power buffer. This is what seemed like the natural choice to me. Unfortunately in this configuration, the chassis wouldn't close. I was forced to move the element and install it somewhere else. Only then I was able to close the model. The picture below shows my final location.

In my post about the BR80 upgrade I tried to come up with some "scientific" ways of deciding whether a power buffer of this size was useful at all. The results were promising back then. Now I can say I'm 100% positive the capacitors that I use do provide enough power to smoothen the ride...

My confidence comes from a mistake I've made during the upgrade. The manual is pretty clear about the need of disabling "analogue operation" if a power buffer is added. That's something I did not do. The side effect? Locomotive going forward at full speed once the DCC power is abruptly cut.

The decoder probably assumes it's running on a DC layout instead of DCC when the digital signal is suddenly gone, and consumes the capacitor's entire charge at once for a short but a very fast ride. This does look scary and it's something I disabled right away once I saw it (bit 2 on CV29). But it also proves the power buffer offers enough energy to actually push the model forward. In case of the Taurus engine, the locomotive was able to move by over 10cm. Nice!

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Modification #2 is about adding red taillights. For some reason Piko's Taurus does not offer those. I really miss them, so I've decided to install my own set. I'm using regular 5mm LEDs with 1kOhm resistors. All soldered in the simplest possible way shown below...

The 5mm LEDs fit perfectly into the slots in the model's chassis. It almost feels as if Piko intended to include those but for some reason decided not to at the very last moment. Everything is ready - all I needed to do was to stick my elements into the holes. A tiny drop of hot glue gave me confidence my lights would not fall out.

Of course some simple extra wiring is needed. And suddenly the leftover cables from the DCC conversion became useful!

What I'm doing is basically bridging the front red LEDs with the back white ones, and vice versa. I do not need any extra control over my taillights, and it's OK for me that they will light up together with the opposite headlights (function F0 in DCC). I keep it simple!

My solution works right away. And now in addition to the strong headlights...

...I can also enjoy a little bit more subtle taillights.

I'm very happy with the two above changes. And I'm actually considering a third one already - adding a cabin light. I'm just not sure if I really need it or not... What do you think?

Liliput 95900, G-scale gondola car

When I was taking advantage of the sale offer at the MSL store, the Liliput beer car was not the only item I bought. I have picked one more product from the same manufacturer - a simple gondola car. It was priced at 44 Euro which is really cheap for a G-scale model. Let's take a closer look and see if it was a good deal...

The model number is L95900. On the side of the box it is described as "schwarz" which means "black", but I would rather describe the model as dark gray.

The packaging is super safe. A thick foam mold and a transparent plastic cover hold the car securely in place.

As all the Lliliput models, this one also comes without the couplers installed. We can choose between using LGB or knuckle type, as both are provided, but we have to add them ourselves.

A selection of train company labels is also available, but as expected - Polish State Railways is not included. For some reason we get two sets of identical plates but only one piece can be fitted. My previously purchased Liliput car also came with two sets of those, but the model allowed installation of a pair - one on each side of the wagon. This is not the case here... Manufacturer's mistake?

I'm obviously going for the LGB couplers. This is my third Liliput product, so the setup takes just a couple of minutes.

Here's the complete model:

What catches my attention immediately are of course the metal wheels. It really seems that Liliput always provides those. They're really much, much better than the plastic pieces Piko and LGB use in their low-end products.

The car features a lot of ladders, handrails and other separately applied pieces. Those look great on the outside, but unfortunately the tiny latches holding them are visible on the inside, too. It does not look all that great. The car needs some sort of a load to hide this problem.


The paint job is conservative but pretty much flawless. The car is not a flashy one, but this was not necessarily expected from a regular gondola.


It does look pretty good overall. And it's definitely not black..


...which is clearly visible in the photo taken outside in the sunlight.

I'm happy with my purchase. The model is not extremely captivating, but there's not much to complain about, either. Considering the inclusion of metal wheels and the attractive price, I'd say it was a good deal. I really wish Liliput had a wider selection of rolling stock. They seem to be offering good products without charging a lot for them. I'm waiting for more, Liliput!

3D printed G-scale helipad with Arduino

My recently completed Bell UH-1 Huey helicopter was meant for the garden layout display right from the start. As I was thinking about a good area to place it, I came up with an idea of building a real helipad just for that purpose. But can you buy a G-scale heliport model? You probably can't. But you can always build or... 3D print one!

The shape of a helipad is not really that complex. It's just a round stand after all. The design of a 3D model didn't take long to complete and very soon I was printing the main part.

I wanted to make my helipad somehow special. And I also wanted to finally try the Arduino boards I had lying around for quite some time. Flashing positional lights is what I came up with. I quickly wired the Arduino with six blue LEDs and made them blink.

The connections are very easy. I simply used one output port of the board per each single LED. This way I do not need any power relays and the entire setup consists of only:

• Arduino Nano
• Six blue LEDs
• Six 1kOhm resistors
• 8V power supply

The program to manage the LEDs is not complex either. Actually it's so short that I can easily share it here. This is the complete Arduino code:

int LED_1_1 = 2;
int LED_1_2 = 3;
int LED_1_3 = 4;
int LED_2_1 = 5;
int LED_2_2 = 6;
int LED_2_3 = 7;

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED_1_1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED_1_2, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED_1_3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED_2_1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED_2_2, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED_2_3, OUTPUT);
 
  digitalWrite(LED_1_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_3, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_3, LOW); 
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_1_1, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_2, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_3, HIGH);
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_3, LOW);
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_1, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_2, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_3, HIGH);
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_1_3, LOW);
  delay(300);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_1, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_2, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_3, HIGH); 
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_3, LOW);
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_1, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_2, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_3, HIGH); 
  delay(150);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_1, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_2, LOW);
  digitalWrite(LED_2_3, LOW);
  delay(300);
}

I have installed the LEDs on the top of the helipad base. With small holes in the surface created with a hot needle I pushed the pins through.

The Arduino board and the wiring are hidden inside. I only hope this setup can survive outdoor conditions...

I have also 3D printed a bottom part which will seal the model and provide some level of weather resistance.

There are two extra elements I have printed in 3D:

• a white, flat H letter
• six transparent caps to protect the LEDs

Those were just glued to the base with a regular plastic cement.

Once powered up, it is blinking indeed!

And then I thought - what if it breaks? And I quickly realized I needed a way to easily remove and install again the helipad on my layout. That's when I recalled I had an empty filament spool lying around.

The solution: my helipad will be attached non-permanently to a permanent base.

I have 3D printed a plastic anchor and glued it to the bottom of the helipad. The anchor fits the hole in the spool perfectly. I can now just stick the helipad into the base and it holds well enough. No glue needed, and it can be easily lifted whenever I need.

OK, but if the helipad is elevated - how do the people enter the helicopter? They obviously need some stairs. And so I 3D printed those, too. Actually they came up so nice, I have decided to share them online: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2909311

The helipad is installed. It does not look bad at all. The lights blink at night. The only thing still missing is the helicopter...

I need to find a way to attach my Huey securely to the pad without making any permanent modifications to the model and I'm all set!