Over time I have warmed up to the idea of BP but it isn’t for me. The main advantage of BP is not having to wire the track or clean the track and have trains that never stall. The problem is if you at least 1 locomotive that runs on track power that you have kept for sentimental or any other reason you then need to wire track. This negates the main advantage of battery power. Hey someday when BP is sold installed in our locomotives I probably will buy one but for right now with almost 20 DCC equipped locomotives there is no way I can convert.
Paul Hanson will present a one hour seminar on Dead Rail at The March Meet. I attended his a couple of years ago and it was very interesting. The room was filled with two rail modelers. I'd like to hear what progress has been made in the last two years.
Has there been a recent presentation at York?
John in Lansing, ILL
rattler21 are you referring to the East Coast Large Scale Train Show and it you are when is the seminar. I use BP in my garden railway with Airwire control and might have an interest in Airwire control for MTH ps3 locomotives
c.sam posted:As far as charging large locomotives like the Big Boy or any other for that matter, couldn't you have a powered siding or two where your locos could be parked and be charging at all times (trickle or a fast charge rate user selectable) and not need to be opened up or handled unless a battery change is necessary?
Sam,
Let me throw out something which is either feasible today or shortly should be. Start with a two rail (DC) engine. It needs an electrical source and its wheels are part of the closed circuit. For simplicity sake let us have a layout with two loops, a cross-over track and a spur. No electrical wires to any part of the layout except the insulated (two rail) spur. Place the engine on the insulated spur, activate the spur and through the wheels the electricity flows but not to the electric motor, it flows to the battery in the engine, tender or revenue car. When fully charged, the operator sends a radio signal to the engine and it leaves the spur for an operating session. With its memory capacity, it remembers the track switches it has run through. After an hour or more of running time, the memory senses the battery is getting low. The memory flashes the head light so the operator no longer sends commands. The memory aligns the appropriate track switches, uncouples any cars and the engine heads toward the powered spur and parks itself until again fully charged. It could also throw the spur track switch so no other engine enters. In reality, during any operating session how many engines run more than one hour? Not including idle time, I'd submit very few. These are not toy trains, they are model trains. As a lot of men have mentioned - no wires and clean track. More time to assemble models, weather models, scratch build rolling stock and buildings.
John in Lansing, ILL
That sounds like what a lot of current electric vehicles do already. I saw a show about a factory that had robots that moved stuff for assembly. They followed rails in the floor, watched out for anything in the path, and talked to a central computer to report everything. They went offline automatically to recharge .
Not at all an electronic guru nor very electrical savvy here, but y'all got me thinking. For battery "compartments on a Steam Loco.....why not have the batteries
(yes, plural for LONGER RUNNING time) be inside the tender...yeah there is that tether wire, but me thinks taking batteries out of a tender could be easier than
out of an engine. As for a Diesel, again, perhaps a tether is needed, attached to an adjacent boxcar/ hopper/ or a gondola with a coal load. The last car idea
seems so feasible.......just pop the coal load out and switch out the batteries! Even better....the trailing A unit has the batteries!
Lastly, would anyone care to email me as to the cost (even closely ball parked) for an 3 rail engine converted to battery power....parts and labour? See my profile
See y'all at April York................have a safe trip!
I use battery power in my g scale locomotives. In the steamers the battery is in the tender in the diesels in the locomotive itself. It doesn’t matter though because I install charging ports. Some guys use trailing cars. The cost for what I use is $80.00 for the battery and $140.00 for the motor control board. Ten hours run time no smoke or sound and usually 4 to 5 car length trains
One of my R/C + battery power conversions was an ALCO AA set. The decoder and the battery were in the trailing A unit and power was fed to the leading powered A unit via a small plug & cable. This is a very workable approach that efficiently uses all of the available interior space. On the cost question, try deadrailinstalls.com for a quote.
