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Most of my locos are 009 but I have converted a OO Bachmann Prarie tank. It was the older split chassis one not the current one, and had a canned motor. It was nearly new, I don't think it had seen much running. I used two LiPo cells in series to give 7.4 v nominal and it worked fine. The cells were about 150 mAh capacity, and ran it for well over an hour. The cells were put in the side tanks ; I had to make cutouts in the metal of the chassis to make room for them. You don't need so much weight with radio control, the weight in a normal loco is mainly to improve electrical contact with the track. For a charging connector I used a standard servo connector. I mounted this in the footplate, facing downwards, hidden behind the cab steps. It's simple, cheap and well shrouded. If you want to go the "charging station" route with some sort of automatic connection, I suspect you will end up using a single cell LiPo with voltage step-up and an on board charging circuit, which can be quite small for a single cell. Frank

What motor you use and what bettery setup you have are of course linked. You can generally run a Radio Control setup with a lower voltage supply than the motor is rated at, because you are putting the volts directly on the motor with no losses due to track contact etc. And you do not really want the very high speed that full rated voltage would give you. Most of my Radio Control setups are for small 009 locos, using n gauge chassis. These use a single lipo cell (3.7v nominal) and for those it is useful to have a lower voltage motor (six to nine volts) although modern locos often have motors that run very nicely on lower voltages anyway. For bigger locos, OO scale and similar, I use a two cell setup (7.4 v nominal) which runs normal 12 v motors OK. You also have the option of a voltage conversion board which can within reason give you whatever voltage you need. What is important whatever setup you use is that the motor is efficient and in this modern motors are much better than old designs and very much better than old ones that are worn due to use. Frank

Nigel Lawton has some nice small motors that are efficient and work well with radio control. Not as cheap as £4-5 but not expensive at £6.50-8.50. http://www.nigellawton009.com/VeeTipper.html Frank

Hi Michael, That is a very impressive piece of work. It's fascinating to see how you have improved and miniaturised the kit over the project. You look to have developed a very workable and useful system there. I hope you find somewhere to publish it soon. I'm guessing that you have used standard modules for the Arduino, radio link, etc. with a custom motherboard to link them all together. Are you going to make the motherboard and software available for other people to try out? The link to a DCC system is interesting. One criticism of radio control that comes up frequently is that you cannot easily have sound. If your system can use DCC codes then I guess it could eventually be linked to a DCC sound card? Frank

Robin, That looks to be coming together really well. There is so much innovation in that loco and it is all helping to turn the basic concept of radio control into a very economical and workable solution for a small scale loco. A couple of questions, are you running the electronics straight off the battery or is there some stabilisation and/or voltage step up? And what software are you running? Will it enable DCC codes to drive a sound chip? Ok, thee questions! Frank

Hi Chris, Thank you for your positive comments. You are quite right about the driving experience with BPRC. It's just like driving a real loco, you turn the knob and it sets off, and keeps going, no need to tap it or nudge it or shake the baseboard, it just goes. No need to take a run at the points where it always stalls or the dodgy bit of track, it just goes. You have complete confidence in the loco you are driving, which you just do not have with track power. I do demonstrations of BPRC in the smaller scales, mainly 009, at shows and I like to get people to try it out just to experience the difference. BPRC is certainly viable in the smaller scales, the thing is that I have found it a lot easier to incorporate when building a loco from a kit than to backfit to a RTR loco as there may be modifications required to free up the internal space you need which are easier when building the loco. So this suits my main scales of 009 and 3mm, although I have backfitted BPRC in an OO RTR loco too, and it is certainly possible, as Corbs has shown. The setup you describe is very similar to what I generally use. Also, as you have found, you can run BPRC locos on DC or DCC track successfully, so can use them alongside DC locos used for high power or long running time duties. Frank

Hi Dave, Glad to see you are making progress with the PWM frequency. As regards the question of damage to motors, the generally agreed wisdom is that it depends on the type of motor. For ordinary motors, low PWM can be beneficial, as you have seen with your Smokey Joe. The low frequency but longer pulses gives a motor fewer but bigger kicks so this can help with starting and low speed running. Traditional "DC" pulse controllers running on mains derived 50 or 100 Hz pulses used this to improve running at low speeds. However, more modern lighter coreless motors may be damaged by low frequencies as the motor responds much more quickly and the motor in in effect being started and stopped by each pulse. P So the general advice is to run coreless motors with higher PWM frequencies at the top end of the Deltang range, but try the lower frequencies for more traditional designs. Hope this helps Frank

It is possible to program the receivers for different PWM frequencies, so you could change them if you wanted to. You do need a different transmitter though, either a normal aircraft "two stick" transmitter or one of the special programming units DelTang produce. This is because you need control of channels 1-4 to invoke the programming mode, and the normal DelTang transmitters do not have channel 4 controls. You only need it to make the change though, so you could just borrow one and try it out. Frank

It all looks to have been running very nicely at Goole, Gary, well done! Good to see someone showing the flag! Frank

I have used Templot to produce single point templates, which is very easy as it starts up with a point template that you can modify to get the point geometry you want. The trouble then is that if you want to do anything else there is not so much a learning curve as a cliff face to climb. I have watched the tutorials which only seem to illustrate how difficult it is. Is there an easy way into doing other things? I'd really like to be able to do slips. Frank

Nice coupling Garry. The curved fold is very neat. I have been experimenting with couplings too. I have some with the loop cut off the back beam and replaced with some 0.45mm wire, bent into three sides of a rectangle and soldered to the beam of the coupling, The lip on the loop stops the couplings riding over each other when being pushed. I have replaced this with a small vertical piece of the 0.45 mm wire soldered about a quarter of the way across. They look a lot neater than the normal ones. I am also trying magnetic actuation with a piece of iron wire soldered to the back of the hook and bent down over the wheel axle. I use two magnets to uncouple the wagons, one for each coupling, spaced by the distance between the iron wires. So far it looks promising though not perfect yet. Frank

The Atlas models do crop up on eBay and occasionally in small ads. Some shops carry a few from time to time, our local model shop had a few last time I was in. I think the North Yorkshire Moors Railway shop usually has quite a few in stock although I have not been to look myself. They are nice models and as Garry has shown can be motorised quite successfully. One of our local group members is currently motorising a Duchess. Frank

Gary, Silver Fox looks very good, a nice model and well worth the effort. Looks very tempting although I have no-where I could sensibly run one, my modelling interest is LMS branches so not very likely on those! Frank

That looks very promising Gary. The wheel spacing seems to match the splashers on the body much better on this than in the photo in post 39. Is this the difference between the Brit and the Castle chassis? Frank

That looks very nice indeed Garry. Frank

Thanks Simon, I do have a couple of videos on YouTube, quite old ones now. Argos, I have never had to worry about fitting the antenna into a loco, and that includes 009 tank locos, so this should not be a problem, But I do tend to put the RX up under the cab roof, mainly so you can see the status LED if you need to. This seems much the easiest place, and unless you pick the loco up and turn it over it is pretty much invisible. If you are interested in radio control, ther is a very good discussion on the Freerails forum, its a US forum but actually the radio control people are from across the globe. The best UK forum is probably NGRM-online which is a narrow gauge forum but has a fair amount on radio control. Radio control seems to have taken hold in narrow gauge in the UK. Frank

Hi, I have a few radio control locos, mostly 009 but some other scales. All use Deltang electronics. Mostly they are either plastic bodies or whitemetal bodies, and for these I have the RX in the cab and usually have a styrene roof, partly because of RF shielding concerns but mostly to improve the loco balance as otherwise they are often tail heavy. Range seems not to be a problem, I can get at least 30 ft and usually the problem is seeing what the loco is doing! I do have one 3mm loco that is a brass etch kit. It is a diesel and the RX is in the cab with the usual small diesel style windows and otherwise totally enclosed in brass. I have just checked the range of this. It will keep control up to 30 ft away quite nicely. Much beyond 30 ft it loses contact and then you have to go back to just over 20 ft to regain contact. So I think 20 ft should be OK. I would not recommend changing the antenna. The ones on the Deltang boards are quarter wave at 2.4 GHz and this is the best antenna to use. I do have a couple of locos one at OO scale and one at O-16.5 that run on two cells, with the Deltang Rx 6 series receiver. I charge these with a balance charger that plugs in to a socket under the footplate. I use a standard servo connector for this as it is three contact and works fine. For charging the other locos which run on single cells I use the same connectors as the LiPo batteries use, again under the footplate. I have found if you put the connector and switch under the footplate, one each side, with the wires coming up into the cab, then wiring up is straightforward and usually there are steps below the cab door that hide the connector and switch very nicely. All of my locos are tank locos so no tender option! Frank

Thanks Phil, useful links. Frank

Phil, Thanks for the info, the table in particular is very useful. One query, the table, like most of the others I have seen, gives dimensions for wheels, and for track in relation to points etc. How does this relate to the acceptable radius of curvature for the track? One of the big issues with fine scale for many people is the large radius curves that have to be used. How is this defined? Frank

Thanks Chris Frank

Thanks Chris, Just to clarify, for the first link, is the price for one wagon body or the stack of three shown in the image? Thanks Frank

Wim is right, there are some very good and easy to assemble wagon kits. Currently a very good offer on some of the more common ones too. Have fun! Frank

From what was stated I think most of the stock and locos will go with the layouts. Not much hard information though. Frank

On another forum it is stated that County Gate, Cliffhanger and Bratton Fleming have been sold and will be on permanent display, but no details of where or who now owns them. Frank

Are all the layouts at Ally Pally 12mm gauge or are there any 13.5 or 14.2? Frank