John, what a delight to see the end result! A very creative scene that goes far beyond the usual static scenery of a model! Bravo, sir! Although I have other areas in which my creativity is focused I can appreciate that you had to plan, design, test, tweak and work a lot to make the finished product. God bless you, John! Well done!!

Interesting to see this now. A few years ago, we used this system for a professional exhibit. But we used hall sensors and replaced the DC motors with servo stepper motors, so we could get synchronized travel, repeatable speed and just used one hall sensor per track as a reset point. Also used a fast Arduino Due.

Started watching these videos intrigued by the creativity . THEN i recognised then I recognised your voice. Thank you for so much joy over the years

OMG ! John, thank you SO much for 'introducing' me to this ! - I had absolutely NO knowledge of Magnorail... I did some work for Gerry Anderson on Thunderbirds (a very long time ago!) and know he, as I am now, would have been stunned at how useful this could have been !!! Take care, Mike

I love this little scene, so well thought out and executed.

This is incredible!! Absolutely beautiful and breathes life into a scene

Wow the finished product is amazing to watch. Just love it.

Hi folks, I suggest using needle nose pliers or similar to hold the reed switch wires between the bend and the glass to further minimise the risk of damage. This action model looks wonderful does n't it!

Absolutely superb modelling - one of the most interesting videos I have watched in a long time. Thank you!

that's on a whole other level mate, congrats!

The final result is wonderful 🤩 you did a great job 👍

First of all, this is a very good scene and takes Magnorail way further than I have seen before. Here's a suggestion though, something that would add a bit more realism would be to extend this concept to also control the speed of the Magnorail motor slowing it down so it's more realistic when vehicles go round corners.

Brilliant! You confirm the discussion I had with a model maker-integralist: for him the models shouldn't be mobile, but all fixed! Evidently ten years ago I could already see far! But your model; very nice... only ever seen such a curved short bridge!!! 😊

What an incredibly beautiful diorama with Magnorail. Thank you for your explanations. Best model railway greetings from Germany and thanks for sharing!

Absolutely brilliant work. I love this idea and the craftsmanship. Greetings from Germany.

This is the coolest thing I've seen all day! That's amazing work on many levels!

Wow! The action model is wonderful! I now want to see all of them.

What a delightfull masterpiece! A big compliment to you Sir from the Model Railway Club Deventer MSCD!

I like those "howto's" with technics as Arduino's. Thanks for sharing.. the video is well explained en the scenery is outstanding. Till next time!

No idea how or why I'm here on this channel, but thanks KZfaq! This is just amazing! Mad skills on so many levels! Looks like fun, but no way I'd have the patience for all this.

What a fantastic addition, more tips tricks and special effects please.

just happened across this. you have a wonderful talent, and the diarama obviously tells a story... great work!

Fantástico. Você é um mestre! Parabéns

Never seen something like this. Amazing. Thanks voor sharing

The diorama is really brilliant.

THAT WAS WONDERFUL!!!!! Reminds me of a major accident or two that I had on my bike when I was a kid. Except no ambulance.

That "motion" is so increadably smoooooooth. It's really quite breath·tak·ing. Thank you for the video. Cheers from So.CA.USA 3rd House On the Right

That's fantastic, what a great application of the magnarail and arduino's

fantastic love te animation look forward to more videos

I love the mechanisms ised to illustrate the bicycle crash. Very clever 👍

Very clear and informative thank you

Nice video John very informative 👍

Brilliant stuff- need more please

First time i have seen this and its most interesting.

great help bro. thanks. dbs from INDIA

4:55 You don't need the external pull-down resistor. The Arduino's I/O pins already have an internal pull-down resistor that's takes effect when you configure the pin with INPUT_PULLDOWN.

Thank you very much amazing creation. I love it

Amazing work. Thanks for sharing.

Wunderschöne Idee und sehr gut gemacht.

Great looking diorama!

It is great! It is a cool story in the one little village! Decorations very cool! I mean you can add traffic light and other! Very cool!

Very nice video and I'm interested in knowing more about the special effects

What a fantastic job! Respect!

Wow, such amazing work, thank you for sharing!

The accident effect is very nice!

Never seen something like this. Amazing. Thanks voor sharing👍

Very cool. I can only imagine how many hours of work went into this. I did a project some years ago where we wanted to demo something at a convention so we built a slot car track and we wanted to time the laps and have a board with the information in real time. We started with reed switches but couldn't get them to measure the passing cars accurately. I don't know if there was lots of electrical interference from the slot or if the car just went by too fast but we had to go with another solution. I did not know at the time that the orientation of the reed switch was important. We had an intern at the time doing the electronics and I wonder if he knew, he was really smart so he might have. If I ever bump into him I will have to find out. Maybe that was a reason for the problems we encountered.

Great job! Thanks for sharing.

This is very educational as we learn also how the vehicles move on the Thomas the Tank Engine model series. I was wondering myself how the make vehicles like Bertie the Bus move or how sometimes the trucks or lorries move. And this is how it's done!

Incredible GREAT JOB!!

Man this is an absolute masterpiece

Now Scale it up from a Mini-Miniaturwunderland to a Miniaturwunderland. This little piece really leaves you in awe of what the guys in Hamburg have created.

Absolutely brilliant

brilliant work👍

Would have liked to see more about the assembly, configuration, and operation of the track underneath. I suppose I should see if can look that up. Anyway, very charming scenario for the sequence.

Very, very cool !!! Well done !!!

Very nice! Thank you for sharing.

Great channel! Amazing job! I just subscribed.

4 Years late, but it is still brilliant in 2023.

How nice to see! the technique is also very well done! respect! Healthy and Friendly Greetings from the Netherlands! Rob

Loved it, the scene was very funny.

This is amazing model building

Very impressing!👍

Do you know about state machine programming? It's where you have a place in the code for every combination of events. So, the initial state would be "motors off". The next state would be "bicycle running before accident". The next state would be "bicycle stopped, rider thrown". Etc. The transition between the states is driven by the inputs, or a timer. So you would have a timer with a random timeout (so the scenario gets run at random intervals), which gets set when entering State 0 (motors off). When that timer fires, it sets the state to State 1 (bicycle running before accident) and turns on the motor for the bicycle magnorail track. It stays in State 1 until the reed switch fires saying that the bicyclist has reached his doom, then it enters State 2. Etc. It makes it very easy to make a script, because once you have created the engine that drives the state machine, the states themselves are like Lego(tm) bricks. If you want to change the script, just move the states and their actions and their triggers around.

Marvellous stuff! Something to delight me as a 50 year old, but the 'magic' of it would have fascinated my (former) 5 year old self even more! Could vehicles designed for the Faller Car System work? Advantage being having working lights (though no doubt functionality would be limited versus a proper Faller road system), but maybe the front steering would function more like a real vehicle. Obviously the vehicle would need the motor to be removed or mechanically isolated. Problem with the Faller system seems to be that the vehicles need to be quite large to accomodate the drive system and battery, meaning that you are restricted mostly to commercial vehicles. With Magnorail, normal cars, as well as bikes and presumably motorbikes, could be used- but not as autonomously, since all vehicles on a chain would start and stop together. But I bet both systems could at least be used side-by-side.

i was impressed untill the bike crash.... then i was blown away, that was very unexpected, and well done.

Amazing work!!! Wow

haha how cool is that bike, I love the little crash scene mate, very well done

WRT using photopaper as the running surface, polypropylene poster paper is pretty widely used in print for outdoor posters, it's similar to the stuff the new banknotes are made of, and I'd imagine it would work well as a replacement. If you had it printed on a suitable UV printer it would get a nice scale-accurate-ish matt finish for tarmac etc surfaces.

Thank you for sharing this.

Awesome job sir

This is outstanding and very clever. I want to build a variation of this idea and wonder if the script for the Bicycle Accident is available. It would be a good starting place.

Thank you for posting

This is really funny and kind of cute!

I'd never heard of Magnarail before watching this, and I', so fascinated! :O The thumbnail looked particularly wild, like a robotic looking spin fossilised in stone :O Regarding Arduinos, I have a few genuine ones I got from Maplin years back (remember Maplin? :O) and I used those with the ISP program to problam bare chips. I can make incredibly miniaturised circuits that way

jeez, its almost like you've been a special effects expert for years and designed roller coasters or something 😉😂

Wonderfully clever and skillfully executed. The cyclist was a hack, obviously, but everything else superb!

Super model diorama Nice!

The cheery music while panning up to reveal a freshly dug grave is some Monty Python level humor

That’s very clever. 👍

The best idea

That is really good. I love seeing new ways to use Arduino's. Thanks for sharing!

Well done!

There are tiny (less than 2mmx2mm) RFID tags that you could either embed in the chain or attach to a vehicle and attach a reader antenna to the track like the reed switch and use that to trigger vehicle specific actions along the track

Magnificent work. I've been trying to solve a problem with simulated running water. I've been relying on analog motors to transport a card stock "stream". I wonder if this could be harnessed for same? Cheers!

ingenious. Well done.

This was FRICKIN COOL!

this is so awesome!!!

Hi John, I know I'm 3 yrs late in getting to the party, but what you've created is amazing. I'm now looking at doing something similar to my railway. Would there be any chance of a glimpse of your schematics and arduino sketches.?

Super job

Brilliant 😍

Whoaow. That's amazing...

great stuff here

That's fantastic!

that looks Neat!

That... is amazing.

The sequence that I saw was quite funny; the “magnetic” cyclist appears to cycle out of the barn > along the road and between the chevron signs and crashes > the ambulance appears and drives to the crashed cyclist, picks it up and wizzes off and the camera panned to the church yard and “there is the cyclists grave being dug” 😄

Very impressive.

wow this could become a whole seperate hobby next to running modeltrains

Amazing 😳👍🏻