Collision Avoidance

If you are running two vehicles on the same circuit sooner or later the faster one will start to tailgate the slower one and start to push it along. With the system as supplied your only two options are to stop the faster one for a while to let the slower one get a bit of a lead, or divert one of them onto a different circuit.

Rutger Friberg of Sweden has designed an system that can be fitted to Faller vehicles that uses an infra-red beam to detect if another vehicle is in front and slow down accordingly. This allows traffic to behave most realistically and even come to a halt in a queue when waiting at traffic lights, for example.

The system is described in his book Model Railroad Electronics 4 under the heading Dual braking for electric vehicles. Unfortunately some of the components seem to be hard to find now, as the book was published a number of years ago (1997), however there should be alternatives available. The completed circuit boards will fit inside a bus or lorry but smaller vehicles may prove difficult.

A similar device is available from Car-Control-Jeuscher. This is a simpler design which reduces the component count and, according to the manufacturer, can be fitted into the smallest of the Faller vehicles. Unfortunately this simplification comes at a price and the devices appear to be more sensitive to stray light from incandescent light bulbs than would be wished. Whilst you can get around this by using fluorescent tubes or energy-saving bulbs it could prove embarassing at an exhibition!

The DCCar system also provides infra-red collision avoidance with the signals being coded to minimise interference from external sources.

More details of these three systems can be found here.

Faller have their own solution to the problem. They supply a special stop unit that releases vehicles at regular intervals. The drawbacks are that it does not stop vehicles running into the back of one awaiting its release time and can still allow rear-end shunts, especially where a vehicle is stopped at a junction, bus stop or similar. For what it is worth the item is 161678 Distance Control and is priced around £40-45.