How hard is it converting a loco to battery power?

[Train 284]

Hey everyone, I was just wondering what you have to do to convert a loco to battery power, and is it hard?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Train 284

Hey everyone, I was just wondering what you have to do to convert a loco to battery power, and is it hard?

I think Battery power is the wave of the future for G guage, live steam might be the other option. With the environmental problems of track cleaning and electrical problems that, ironically, have been solved but provide for a cumbersome (at least in my opinion) operation. Battery power is a viable option.

I wi***hat the major manufacturers would make a standard battery platform or offer battery powered, or at least dual operation, locomotives. There would be a revolution.

I may repost this in the general section!!

Capt Carrales

[Anonymous]

I converted a LGB G scale 2-4-0 to battery power. I put in a DPDT switch so the loco can also be run on track power. I used an AM controler and 2 - 9volt Lion batteries for RC cars. I put everything in the tender and had room to spare. The only real problem I have with it is glitches. I'm told that an FM controller is alot better in the glitch department. I'm planning on changing the controller to FM.
I find the battery power setup very handy for track cleaning. I make several passes with the battery loco and the track cleaning car before running anything else and then everything else runs good. I use the LGB track cleaning attachment for the 300 mm. 4 wheel cars. It screws on with no mods, drilling or cutting. Has glue on pads of some fairly soft abrasive material. It seems to work great. I put a piece of steel that wieghs about a pound in the car for wieghting.
I would definitely advise converting at least one loco to battery power if for nothing else but track cleaning.

[TonyWalsham]

Hi Matt.

The degree of difficulty for installing battery R/C inside locos depends a lot on which particular loco it is you wi***o convert and what brand of R/C equipment you propose to use.
Adding sound systems also complicates the issue.

I find most diesels such as those made by USA Trains and AristoCraft quite straightforward.
Most tender type steam locos are also fairly easy to do but the early Bachmann Shay and Climax are quite difficult for a novice.

If you are hesitant to pull a loco apart perhaps you should have the R/C installed professionally.

I have formulated a number of specialised installation instructions in PDF format which, although designed with RCS in mind, can also be used for other brands.
All of the above refers to installations inside a loco. Putting everything inside a trail car can simplify the project a lot.

[Train 284]

Thanks, I was going to try and convert a Bachmann 10 wheeler and mogul, and possibly a small usa trains or aristo craft diesel.

[Marty Cozad]

Matt
I have not done a Bach loco. But i do know and agree with Tony on what he said above.
once you figure one out it all comes together.
I tell new folks what i do is simply find the wires feeding power from the track and reroute them to either a power soucre of RC unit. So the loco still thinks its getting track power and this way i don't to change any other wires like lights etc.

[cacole]

I've put AirWire900 Wireless DCC receivers and SoundTraxx Sierra or SoundTraxx DSX Sound-Only decoders into two Bachmann steam engines -- a Consolidation and a Mogul, and converted both to battery operation. These conversions required removal of the Bachmann circuit boards and all electrical pickups from both the locomotives and tenders. The AirWire900 receiver/decoder was placed in the boilers and the sound units went into the tenders. The AirWire900 decoder can handle the headlight, a smoke unit, and motor. The Auxiliary DCC outputs of the decoder were routed to the tender to control the sound effects of the DSX or a function-only decoder in the case of using the Sierra sound system. Since the Sierra sound unit is not a DCC decoder, a function-only decoder is requried to trigger the sounds if you want to control them directly from your hand-held controller and not have to rely on track magnets.

Both locomotives are powered from 12 Volt Gel-Cell batteries. For the Consolidation I have two boxcars with 5Ah batteries in them, since I pull freight with it; and for the Mogul I have two 2.6Ah Gel-Cell batteries in parallel in a baggage car, since I use it to pull a passenger train.

I chose 12 Volt Gel-Cell batteries because they can be recharged using a regular automotive battery charger instead of needing a special charger.

[Anonymous]

I wrote a series of five articles for Garden Railways that explain just about everything from an unbiased view. If you don't subscribe you can get the whole series as a download PDF file for $11.95 from the Kalmback technical howto library. I don't get royalties so don't care what you do but personally I think everyone should read the series as there's a lot there. Batteries, radios, rocket science-- it's all there.

By the way it makes no sense to put an expensive radio system in a cheap engine. Go to a swap meet, as I did, and buy the cast-off LGB engines. They'll give quality service forever and are usually on the market because the track power pickups are broken and you don't want those anyhow.

[TonyWalsham]

That was very good advice battery man.

I would go for the good quality LGB locos anytime if reliable performance was more important than scale.

[Anonymous]

What about track power with one of those cheap r/c's?

I have read the review in GR on the new RCS unit. One thing I didn't understand is ,can I use one of those $20 r/c car radios? The somewhat digital type.. Off,Forward and Reverse.. but nothing in between? I imagined it would be like, push it for forward, hold it until it gets up to desired speed and then the train stays there until I tell it to do otherwise..by pushing the lever in reverse or something.

I've got to do something about this soon, but current funding is cut until I can make some more turnouts and find buyers.

[TonyWalsham]

Andrew.

Forget about the $20 on - off R/C systems.

You can buy a perfectly good brand name 2 stick DP R/C for around $40 from Tower Hobbies which includes 2 servos. You can likely sell them to recoup part of the $40.

Combine that with a suitable R/C decoder/motor driver, such as one of my EVO series, and you will have very good slow speed control and variable acceleration determined by the stick position.

[Train 284]

Thanks everyone, I am looking for a relativly inexpensive one since I am a little short on cash now. I don't think I would want to buy any Lgb's, way overpriced in my opinion, BTW batteryman, I do subscribe to GR. Is there any book or website I can look at to install batteries?

[Anonymous]

Train 284 -- before the articles in Garden Railways I put a design and construction manual on the Bay Area Garden Railway website (www.bagrs.org/tips and techniques/). You wil see more pictures and more design stuff. You will also find a link if you wi***o correspond with me by e-mail. Even before the web-site, the manual was offered to Kalmback and turned down. As far as I know that's as close as they have come to putting out a book! I was just outside sorting out some trains--- all by remote control, untouched by human hands. Isn't this a fun hobby?

[Anonymous]

Greetings All; I'm a bit new to large scale RR and forums as well, so please forgive if I err; I have played with HO for many years, but never had that dream layout. Would like to battery power my Bachmann Shay, and have read batteryman's articles; however, I am reluctant at this point to rip apart a rather expensive Loco and do the wrong thing and have to re-do the job. A few questions for those more knowledgeable than I: What would be the voltage requirements? What size battery would work best with least destruction of internal structure of boiler, and at the same time be large enough to give a respectable run time? I have some electronic training,( just enough to be slightly dangerous)but don't understand all I know about that. Any help would be hot. Thanx, Lordhawke (Jeff) PS I have visited George Schreyer's website but to me, the pics arenot quite as clear as I need them to be. It is a good site however! Will visit it much more!

[TonyWalsham]

Hello Lordhawke.

Here are pdf drawings that accompany a kit I make for installing battery R/C in a Shay.
http://www.rcs-rc.com/bikbgl.pdf
Although these are for my RCS equipment they could easily be adapted for other brands of R/C that will fit.

Before you contemplate modifying your Shay I would suggest you check the trucks for broken plastic parts and wheel spacers.

[Anonymous]

Hi Tony, thanx for the info, will check it out. I'm just a bit nervous about ripping apart a perfectly good engine to change some of the internals as I'm on a tight budget for the moment, and can't afford to make any mistakes. Planning is VERY important at this stage of (my) development. Hope to gain much more info from this forum. Thanx Lordhawke(Jeff)

[Anonymous]

Just a question for the group:

Has anyone ever installed a battery system in a loco and kept the rails powered to continuously recharge the batteries while you run the train? I would think that installing a float charger in the locomotive for the batteries and increasing the track voltage would give you the best of both worlds.

You wouldn't have to install a large battery bank, and you could run pretty much forever with the train being powered over those sections of bad track. You could have the smoke unit powered off the rails, but not being operated from the battery.

Just a thought from somone that routinely installs battery banks to power equipment while continuously float charging them.

Mark in Utah

[jnichols]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mark_in_utah

Just a question for the group:

Has anyone ever installed a battery system in a loco and kept the rails powered to continuously recharge the batteries while you run the train? I would think that installing a float charger in the locomotive for the batteries and increasing the track voltage would give you the best of both worlds.

Mark in Utah

Mark,

While this seems like a really good idea at first, you quickly realize that the whole purpose for going to battery power was to make track cleaning obsolete, and this counters that thinking. If you want to charge the locomotives through the rails, you must keep the tracks clean enough to allow the charger to operate, and in my experience if you are going to keep the track that clean, just run your trains using track power. If you want the benefits of command control while using track power, there are many solutions from DCC to Radio Control.

I take it from your name that you live in Utah. I also live in Utah (SLC to be more precise), and I quickly grew tired of the track cleaning grind (our climate is a little hard on the rails). Since converting everything to battery and radio control I haven't cleaned a single piece of track, and I don't miss it a bit. If you size your battery packs correctly, and use good quality speed control products like those from RCS, you will have great sucess. My larger locomotives will run for 5 hours or more, and all them have sound systems installed!

[Anonymous]

The idea between mixing a battery with powered rails would be to have the batteries carry you across those sections of bad track while charging the batteries when you do have an electrical connection. The additional cost would be minimal, and it would prolong your run time to "forever" while using a smaller battery pack. You'd also be able to run smoke and other power-hungry thing you'd want.

If you powered everything from the battery you could easily get by with 50% or less electrical pickup from the rails. You'd get this just by the hit-or-miss while ooperating the trains. The only track you'd "have to " keep clean would be the storage track where the batteries would automatically be recharged at the end of the day.

Just an idea....

Mark in Utah

[dsweet]

Gentleman, charging from the track seems like a good idea, but it is not good enough. 1st rule of charging your batteris is to have the shortest direct connection from the charger to the battery. When I make up charging cables thay are a short as possible. If we charge through the rails we now have too much metal plus wires plus connectors plus cheap track pick ups to get that voltage/current through. For all your efforts I do not believe the results are worth it. In the beginning all RCS throttles were track/battery for this reason. Today we do not use this circuit rather make a better throttle for the same money. Today, there are so many chargers available from $20 to $129 that is affordable to get a couple of safe automatic chargers.

[Anonymous]

Ah, but it depends on how you charge the batteries. The secret to get a system to work as I'm proposing is to put the voltage regulator in the locomotive, and not on the track power supply.

For instance, if you need 13.5 volts across your batteries (common 12V lead acid battery), then you'd calculate your track power supply voltage as follows:

13.5 volts + 2 volt drop (regulator) + 3 volt drop (track) = 18.5 volt minimum supply voltage. If you put 20 volts on the track, and have the voltage regulator (the battery charging circuit) in the locomotive, you're in like flint.

This type of thing is done all the time in other industries, just hasn't been applied to model RR's.

Mark in Utah

[TonyWalsham]

Mark,

All ideas are welcome.

Some of us have been doing battery R/C for Large Scale for 20 years.
The idea of using a constant track power to supply a voltage to constantly charge a battery has been tried in the past and abandoned.
It will work, but you are still faced with maintaining the electrical conductivity around the track and also keeping it clean.
Situations that were to be avoided by going battery power in the first place.

If long run times are the goal, there is a very simple circuit using commonly available parts, that allows for the battery to be charged from outside the loco via a jack that also doubles as a port for plugging in auxilliary batteries (to back up the onboard batteries) being carried in a trail car.

Perhaps you would care to build and demonstrate a successful method of providing track power for traction and battery recharging.
Good luck.

[jeckardt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by batteryman

I wrote a series of five articles for Garden Railways that explain just about everything from an unbiased view. If you don't subscribe you can get the whole series as a download PDF file for $11.95 from the Kalmback technical howto library. I don't get royalties so don't care what you do but personally I think everyone should read the series as there's a lot there. Batteries, radios, rocket science-- it's all there.

Batteryman, I went looking for the article set you referenced at Kalmbach but I'm not finding it. Could you please give the article title, or better yet, Kalmbach's pdf order number if you have it?

Thanks,
Joe

[jlcop]

Jeff:
I installed an RCS Elite, Sierra Sound and batteries in a Bachman Shay that I bought from TOC. I am not talented with electrical stuff. If I can do it just about anyone who can follow directions can too. Using Tony's information and TOC's advice it came out fine. I am now on my second RCS/Sierra install.
John

[FJ and G]

I was given this website by a model RRer:

http://www.rcs-rc.com/

In that site are some downloadable PDF instructions, one of which indicates that R/C can be installed in O scale locomotives; in addition to G.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who's actually done this.

Would the motor and gears be left in place and the electrical components removed.

Or, would it be easier to install in a dummy locomotive and add the gears etc?

Currently, there are no O scale or O gauge toy trains offered with r/c.