Battery Trains

Batteries for RC cars are fairly large and shoot their wad fairly fast. If you could get a small battery that would give you 12v at .5 amps for about thirty minutes or more you would really have something. Presently everything I have heard is a long way from that.

Jim Bright

There is a fellow who has done a lot of work on this and I was pointed to him by the On30Conpiracy2 Yahoo! group. I no longer have the link unfortunately but yes, it does work. Power is a 9v NiCad rechargeable battery. My ideal would be to have a fast recharge battery (Lithium/Ion? - dunno much about battery technology) which is recharged through the wheels at the loco depot on the only section of track on the layout that has wires to it. With some sort of power indicator on the loco, trying to make a refuelling point before it dies on you - just like the real thing. Or maybe, as John Armstrong said, "Way too much like the prototype!" :-)

Steve Newcastle NSW Aust

If the basic track is electrified (never mind turnouts, reverse loops and the like) then a loco battery/capacitor needs only to carry enough charge to run a train length at the most. If you would be satisfied with push button speed step control and reversing then a very simple R/C system would suffice.

Greg.P.

After doing some battery researc, I have to agree with that for NiCad.

Thank you for the reply. Could not find anything on On30, but did find it being used for G gauge. I will try it by using AA NiMH batteries.

Dual fuel? Interesting idea which should work well. Thanks.

Back around 1988-89 Bachmann entered the large scale market with their Big Hauler. It was battery powered (four D cells) and had a handheld rc.

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

Motor-generator in tender, powered by constant 12 volts in rail. Even if track is dirty it won't effect charge rate or performance. Generator charges battery in tender. Isolate loco motor from rail. Diesel locos can hold the entire system, or put M/G in dummy unit behind powered one. What do you think?

This is getting SO prototype...

Cosm> Would it be possible, or good idea, to adapt the system from RC cars to

Why an M/G?? Needless space and mechanical complication. Just use electronics to keep the battery bank charged up from the constant rail voltage, and run off the battery, like an on-line UPS. Just think - no more reverse loop protectors! You'd still need to do occasional rail cleaning, bu it wouldn't be nearly so critical.

However, when the neighbor's garage door remote sent your new brass 2-6-6-6 off the end of a track onto the floor . . . GAAAAAARRRRGH!

Sounds like a job for something a bit more sophisticated than the typical radio controlled toy.

DUH! You're right, Steve. I Rube Goldberged that one. Overkill at the Creative Factory!

Would be fun to construct though...

Sounds good, but use DCC through the rails, not radio.

So, the idea becomes a sort of on-line UPS to run the motors in your locomotives, and standard DCC to control the power, etc. as now, assuming that the signal will get through "eventually" despite occasional dirty spots on the track? I can buy that. Could be an advantage if it could be retrofitted without much problem to existing DCC locos - assuming room for NiMH packs - and that IS a big assumption for HO at least, and probably out of the question for N, even if it was custom LiIon batteries instead.

Perhaps with some future high-density (in both the power and mass senses) battery technology it could take the space used by lead weights.

In the end, it seems you might be developing a UPS to bridge dirty rail spots, frogs, etc., for very short time periods. Would it be worth it?

As the idea stands, you have DCC providing power to the batteries, and smooth battery DC feeding the decoder - so, why have DCC track power?

Regards, Greg.P.

Steve Caple wrote:

Maybe for garden railroads (and certainly easier to do in a larger scale). It would be fun to fiddle with in any case :_>

battery life limitations - and actually, DC provides power to the batteries, and the DCC signal floating over it controls how much of the smooth power available [for only a limited time without constant refreshment] goes to the motor, lights, whistle/horn, etc.

Available now with Lenz Gold decoders!

Keith

How would you achieve that? All the decoders I've seen use the same track power source (DCC signal) to operate the outputs and to power motor and accessories. Are there some where "input signal" and "motor power source" are separate?

Regards, Greg.P.

Aha!

I'd say it's worth a try, at least. The nice thing about NiMH, over NiCad, is that NiMH tend to last longer - i.e. more charge/discharge cycles, without the problems that NiCad is prone to.

I also like the suggestion that has been made in another part of the thread, that the battery wouldn't need to be as large if it weren't the primary motivator, but rather, just providing a UPS to the track current - this, I think, has a great potential, as I've noticed many times, that if my engines could just get past the short dead spots on my layout, they'd run pretty well.

Anthony Albert