Acc+Ess Ltd (Protocab)

Well, as the designer I can give it to you from the horse's mouth! The Protocab Pilot Series is wireless control of motor speed and direction. It is not based on DCC for many reasons. The system provides for an unlimited range of personalisations including acceleration and braking rates. The ability to add lighting effects and sound are inherent to the design for later development and incorporation as are other auxiliary functions we have in plan. I hope this helps. Best regards Tony Hagon Director Acc+Ess Ltd Bowermadden Scotland KW1 4TW tony@protocab.com

Well. thanks very much for your kind comments and I can confirm that what you say is absolutely true! In fact, I have here two layouts, one 7mm, one P4 both work in progress and not a wire in sight! I can't claim that all the point tie bars are solid because on my 75A Brighton layout all the loco yard points are solid but the turnouts on the running lines have insulated tie bars to accommodate the track circuiting! By definition, therefore, all the wheelsets are solid. I have thrown away the carborundum track cleaner! Being a bit more serious, the approach we are taking goes beyond the benefits you have identified. As an ex-railwayman myself, I am keen to create a system that enhances the whole modelling experience, so that running a train is as close to the prototype as possible. But above all, as a company we are very keen to hear from modellers, and if I may advertise our Club Protocab, open to all and with no membership fees, it is a forum of several hundred modellers that we at Acc+Ess manage as a conduit to let interested modellers know of our developments. There's a contact form on the website, or simply send an email to club@protocab.com. We send out newsletters and we have run a couple of webinars which we intend to continue this year. We have a YouTube channel but being heads down in developments, there's only one video so far.. This is a very early prototype and still going strong. We've developed a long way since May 2012! Thanks for the continuing opportunity to share our developments with you and do please contact me. Best regards Tony Hagon Director Acc+Ess Ltd Glenrhu KW1 4TW

I'm grateful to you for referring to our website and I would be grateful for the opportunity to reply to some of the discussions raised in this thread. Please let me know if, as a commercial venture, I should not be making comments here. The development of Acc+Ess Protocab is very much alive and well! I see, to my horror, that the website still shows our prediction of availability for Spring 2013, and I'm grateful to you for pointing it out. This will be corrected as soon as possible. True, back in Spring 2012 when we first showed our prototype in operation at the Scalefour North expo in Wakefield, we thought that we could bring the product to market by that November. Two things: firstly we received very much feedback from modellers on features we should incorporate. Secondly, with the imperative to be able to fit the system including the batteries in small 4mm locos in particular (we demo'd the system inside a 7mm Terrier), miniaturisation was the order of the day and still is. As the company's Director, I take product quality and customer satisfaction extremely series, and our developments have been taken up with ensuring high reliability and service quality. We won't release our products, even for beta test, until I (as a modeller as well) am satisfied with them. Releasing a predicted availability date makes us a hostage to fortune, but at last we are on the final furlong and I have high confidence that the initial products, which we are calling the Pilot Series, will be available in Spring this year. To answer some specific points in this thread: Regarding battery performance, we reckon to get around 4 hours' running time from a full charge (the rechargeable batteries are charged in situ in the loco) and at the four exhibitions we attended in 2013, we ran our locos for the whole day without being recharged, with the exception of the 3 rail Hornby Dublo 'Duchess' which, having a much hungrier, 55 year old motor, ran for about two hours with a train of four coaches. An overnight charge (about 4 hours) provided power for the whole next day. We have been lucky to have been invited to a number of club meetings, hence the MERG write up (I MUST stop demoing the loco running over carpets or paving slabs, Titfield Thunderbolt fashion!). We have been invited to the Scottish MERG group meeting in March, and to a number of clubs in England and Scotland in 2014. We are next exhibiting at Scalefour North in April. Although power from the battery is the first product iteration, with charging from a plug inserted into a socket on the loco, it will be followed by wireless recharging from transmitters beneath the track in, say, sidings and a receiver in the loco. The batteries we use (currently lithium ion) do not have a memory effect of early chemistries and therefore can be 'topped up' at any time. A number of modellers, echoed in this thread, have asked for power from the rails with control wirelessly, and we plan this in the next product development series. The Pilot Series is designed to fit into medium to large 4mm/HO and small O gauge locos with motor current up to 900mA. In design is a range of further units designed to fit into small locos in 4mm and smaller scales. It is a symbiotic relationship -small locos, small power motors, small batteries and small control circuits! We have no problems with the system inside metal bodied locos or, for that matter, running through chicken wire tunnels (i.e. the Faraday cage). We have installed the system inside a range of RTR models and, as expressed in the thread, the biggest issue is that RTR chassis tend to be bulky with little room for the battery and control units. However, although the density of the battery is a bit less than that of the metal chassis, and therefore you lose some adhesive weight, RTR models do, in our experience, have plenty of pulling power with the battery installed in the loco having removed the appropriate volume of chassis block. We are at the beginning of what is possible, which was not the case nearly thirty years ago when we first laid down the plans for Protocab. It's only in the last five or so years that the battery density, component size and cost have been viable for the system and we already know where we want to take it, with new technologies that are emerging. Thanks for this opportunity to reply and I'd be delighted to answer anyone's questions about the Protocab system. Best regards Tony Hagon Director Acc+Ess Ltd Glenrhu Bowermadden KW1 4TW UK