Actually that FRED from eBay is what compelled me to make my FRED.
Ernie bought that FRED on eBay in hopes to put a crowning touch on his gas train. But, while the concept is clever, it is not all that great.
The pickup wipers are stiff and short pieces of 0.005" brass. They are *VERY* fussy. They rub against the backs of the Fox Valley wheels in the truck. They either pick up electricity well but prevent wheels from rotating, or allow the wheels to spin but pick up power very intermittently. The flasher is simply a red LED in series with a filed down standard 5mm flasher LED and a resistor. The flasher LED is painted black and hidden in the truck. Then not only the flash rate is totally wrong, the LED doesn't fully turn off, so the flash cycle consists of dim, flash, dim. That just wouldn't do for Ernies custom-decorated train. So I designed and built the flasher you see here. The article about building one is on my long list of to-do stuff. It is really designed for DCC (it needs at least 9V to operate).
