Power supply

[Anonymous]

I believe that I've heard or read somewhere that a battery charger (the kind you use if your as fortunate as me to run an old car) is a cheap and suitable power supply for the garden railway.

Does anyone have any experience with this???????.

All the best

Peter

[Anonymous]

peter
you will have to install a train reostat to control your trains.

[Anonymous]

[#welcome] Peter

In one of the later issues of Garden Railways Magazine there was two men that used 3 of them from Wal Mart on a large scale track sections.

Rene might remember it cause it was right in center of magazine. At this time my mags are all out of wak.

[kstrong]

It's possible. As stated above, you'll need a way of varying the voltge coming out of the charger. That can be done with something like Aristocraft's throttle control (the one that plugs into their 18v power supply) or even their Train Enginee control system.

The one thing I'd be worried about is the waveform of the voltage coming out, though. Ideally, we want "filtered" DC to run our trainsl. This means the voltage going to the throttle shows up as a flat line on the screen of an ocilloscope. Unfiltered DC looks like a bunch of humps. Trains will run fine with this, but the electronics that control sound systems and other features aren't terribly fond of it.

If you're looking for an inexpensive alternative to model railroad power supplies, you may want to look at HAM radio power supplies. I know a few folks who use them, and they're a fair chunk cheaper than their model railroad counterparts--and depending on the model, more stable and posess better filtering.

Later,

K

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help guys - as my locomotives don't have any electronics or soundsystems I think I'll give it a go

All the best

Peter

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys

After a lot of thinking and reading you replies again and again, I've decided to go for a 18 volt 3 amp power supply designed for a walkietalkie combined with a walk around transmitter/reciever from Aristocraft.

Once again thanks for your response

All the best

Peter