Monday, September 14, 2015

Wayside design options

After speaking with a few Superway team members about possible designs for wayside power, it seems that there are two prevailing ideas. The first is to supply wayside power by swapping the wheels on the bogie to a conductive material and using the lower rail as a voltage potential which is conducted through the wheels. The second potential (whether it be hot or ground) would be fixed to and insulated from any surface on the guide rail and would require a second method of contact such as a feeler or metal shoe similar to the way bumper cars conduct power through the ceiling. However, no one seems sure of the appropriate way to take the power from the spinning wheel and axle and get it into the bogie. The second method would be to simply duplicate the feeler or shoe so that it is used twice for both power and ground. This seems simpler as we won't have to buy new wheels or figure out how to draw power from the inner side of the spinning wheel/axle assembly. If the rail road tracks idea from my previous post works out, we could run two shoes off of the top of the bogie which are offset to hit the hot and cold rails.


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