You could then develop high tech, non wearing, non slipping off traction tires to put on every wheel so the engine could pull a decent load.:tb-biggrin:
I definitely agree that track-free power would be awesome. Someone started a thread on the A-board a while back about wireless power which got me to thinking how feasible it was. I posted an estimate that, in order to deliver ~10 watts to a typical loco anywhere in a typical basement, you would need to broadcast ~500 kW of power, 10 times more than a typical powerhouse AM radio station! This has many obvious negative ramifications. With GPS, you could win substantially by beaming power directly to each loco, albeit requiring sophisticated broadcast equipment (but money is no object...). However, GPS would be great for a ton of other reasons too. How about tiny, high-capacity rechargeable batteries for train power? (We can dream.)
And all that dirty EMF? As long as we're dreaming how about capacitor sized, clean, fusion based nuclear batteries... not just in the locos, but in the passenger cars for lighting too.
Somewhere, sometime, someone suggested a line of steam designed to be easily customizable and with all possible parts interchangeable. Standardized motors, drawbars, decoder interfaces, etc. Parts to adapt to the look of any road's steam. Something actually feasible.
I think it would take something like this to rise to the "industry shaking" level as reported to be the intention of some manufacturers to announce at NMRA/NTS. I can't think of many things that would fit that category if it involves the same old, same old, in just another item. But I do like Russell's suggestion of robotic people. Dress them in striped or plain denim and we could truly have "model railroaders." Ben
How about working, self contained FRED's that are placed on the rear coupler by our robotic N scale people. But as suggested in the post about customizable steam to model any road there are a lot of things that should be both feasible and affordable that we need but no one has produced.
An N-scale manufacturer that decides to start a line of products, from engines to rolling stock to structures to detail parts, that model the transition era (50's and 60's) and address small branch lines rather than modern, huge, and long. I know. Outrageous.
1. Decoders go into every piece of rolling stock and control, via use of a simple switch machine motor, the open and close position of each coupler. 2. Two electrical contacts on every coupler (one on the top, one on the bottom) to relay power not just from wheels to frame, but from frame to frame.. to frame to frame, all the way down the train. That would practically eliminates power pick-up issues.
Yes, I've thought of that one too. And it would be a great in running setout and pickup operations on your industry tracks. But from a practical operational standpoint each car would need its own address. While DCC presently allows for up to 9999 addresses (and the technology could be expanded to 65,535 using hexidecimal... probably with alphanumeric names in a lookup list), can you imagine the logistics of trying to find the correct address for a given car in a train of 15 or 20 cars (let alone the long trains N scalers with large layouts love to run) while operating two, three, or more trains on your layout? Of course you could do it from a graphic computer screen interactively if there was software that let you keep entire train configurations in a database like Decoder Pro lets you do with your locos. Best.
You wouldn't need to keep track of where the cars were, the trains would show up on the screen and you would know where they all were. The only caveat being you would have to invest the time to build a yard big enough to leave all your cars on the track. But who would want to do that.
An NYC J3a Hudson (regular black, no funky streamlining), with all the traction benefits of the sprung drivers that Kato put on their GS-4, with dual-mode high quality DCC and sound already installed.
Certain audit trigger. Wow... I like that one... I'd probably get a huge refund which I could re-invest in more N scale stuff!!! Let me shoot-off a letter to my Senators and Congressmen right away.
