To battery power a Legacy engine, you have to have some method of delivering the low frequency RF signal to the engine's decoder. Could be interesting, but not sure that such a setup is viable.
It's just another RF signal and you just need the right kind of antenna to radiate it out. Traditionally this is the outer rail of the track. I experimented around some time back with: using no connection, a wire, and some track laying around near my layout but not connected to it. My memory is the engine could take commands in close proximity and maybe somewhat farther away the engine failed to pick up the command. note that this is fairly compact "20 x 20" area more or less. I even experimented with plugging the legacy base into a 2 prong outlet and this appeared to have no effect on it. I couldn't sort it all out and got tired of reading about ground planes and house wiring and all that - frankly i'm not even sure lionel knows how it works. I even have a small RF "dongle" and I can see the signal on it no matter the configuration. Anyway the pt is I bet a battery could work and the RF would be picked up by the engine at least to prove the pt that it could be made to work with enough expertise in a more general sense ... for many engines, etc... I do mean to try this but once again just haven't been near the thing long to try it the last several days. maybe later today!
A picture of the battery powered LionChief Plus was posted on Facebook on March 15 by the company that provided the battery.
