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I had this round my tree this year,

Its a good use for a christmas train I think!!

YEs looks like a older s and t battery charger.  As it’s only a battery charger it can charge any 12v battery as you’ve found out.

it would probably have been used to power anything but a track circuit, as I can’t think of any track circuit s that’s run off 12v

it more than likely powered a signal, the battery bank providing upto 8 hours standby in the power failed.

Depend on what charger you have,  some charge via the balance plug, others via the output lead.

if the battery’s is in situ it’s easier to run a 4 pile and 2 pole extender lead  out from the battery.  You can buy leads ready made up on eBay, so you can have a short lead on the battery vehicle, And a longer lead to connect the charger and battery

Lgb locos draw 0.5 to 1 amp per motor,   Lgb used to provide a 0-24v dc 1 amp controller as standard.

as for radio control I use 3s lipo approx 12v on all my Lgb and it runs lovely.

a 12v car or lead acid battery will easily be fine to run your loco.

I know of one instant that relates to the folding down of a signal is service.

its wasn’t a full blown spring loaded post, but was a dorman light unit,  that came unclipped inside the signal head and fell over.

the lamp was still proved , and alight and  pointing upto the sky, the driver of the train that found simply approached the signal at linespeed Andy found it missing.

there has now been a national effort to modify and check all the affected signal to ensure no repeat happens.

This may be really simple, but have you tried re-binding the tx and rx, but ensuring that the throttle is centred?

Using rc  gear I have before turned on transmitters and had the control knobs and in the wrong place,

it made control very tricky.

might be worth trying, as it’s quick and easy to do

dan

You wouldn’t be the first to use servos attached To  a normal controller,

i havent done it personally,  but i have heard of it being done before.

the main advantage of doing it, apart from the wireless radios control, is the output is pure dc,  as electronic speed controllers normally put out PWM aka pulse width modulation.

It means you can easily run any dc or dcc fitted loco, and have a wireless controller,  

DAN

Boat and car ones can be half speed reverse. Make sure you check before use

i use this link to use aircraft stuff and make it bidirectional 

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/satr/2point4GHz.htm

Just seen what your proposing it’s easily doable,  all you do is connect the output from a speed controller aka an esc to the rails.

i did the same for g scale the only difference was I could use 24v instead if 12v. It worked really well and give me a cheap wireless throttle

I used rc plane stuff from hobbyking, just need a brushed esc, and one that can do full speed reverse, or a servo driving a dpdt switch to swap,polarity 

I only gave up on the idea as in the garden it’s better to go deadrail Andy fit the rc gear into the loco

dan

Yep the yellow thing is for asdo automated selective door opening,

they get get programmed with a laptop, fitted and then they tell any train fitted with asdo how many door and what side to open 

the pictures also shows a back drive attached to the point, the purpose being to move the rear of the switch over,

Normally its mounted in between the running rails in 3rd rails areas , and outside when there isn’t no 3rd rail

dan 

First of they both run of dc, 

the one with 3 connections is a solenoid type, 

theres 2 solenoids with a common return terminal hence the 3 connections

the other type is a motor that drives a toothed shaft which does the movement , just reverse the polarity to swap direction.

The lgb unit takes ac, and converts it to dc via diode and feeds the half wave dc to the motor.

the 3 connection type are pretty old, and we’re superseded buy the 2 wire type 

and it’s a good idea to open them- 4 screws to check the internals, 

Gillingham Dorset  tunnel is at buckhorn western, 

Here’s a link to a new axle and gear for the consolidation , it’s in the Bachmann USA store,

I'm not sure how easy it it to fit, but it will be a big strip down job

https://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=69_142&products_id=10285&zenid=ajhc2hucjine9pafrbn1eqj763

What Bachmann locos are they?  Some types of  Bachmann locos do split their main drive  gears  over time

Its usually the consolidation loco this happens on

Dan

It’s perfectly possible to hire loco from one company, and driver from another, so long as the company whose has requested the move agree the costs,

You can even hire drivers for short bits of certain moves,

the move you saw saw would have been requested by the owner of the emu, to send it off to a suitably licensed railway scrapyard 

companies such as , ROG, euroPhoenix , WCRC, LSL DRS will be happy to help, for a suitable fee

To put a different twist in things, there is a bar in Prague that delivers beer using lgb and piko g scale trains.

Link here https://vytopna.cz/#. There’s a Few videos on YouTube and the web

There’s also the food rollercoaster at Alton towers, but that’s not quite a model railway

The main thing is these two examples generate revenue first, with the train or food rollercoaster as an extra selling point, with your it/ computer experience in it, you might be able to make a money earning business.

Obviously nether are cheap to set up, but has potential if you want a cost covering or money making business

Dan

Here’s a a few photos of my rc set up,

It’s not the neatest, but it works well for what I want,

The battery is a 3s 1ah lipo, I normally use a 5 ah but that’s tucked away,

There is a receiver, esc and servo/toggle switch all tucked away and there’s still loads of room, and the original weights are still fitted.

Hope the pictures are usefull

Dan

That rc trains link that’s been posted is the easiest and most compact way to do things,

There are other ways of doing things it depends on what you want to do, I use model aircraft equipment, but with a servo operating a toggle switch to change polarity as airplanes don’t fly backwards!

And have a look on gscalecentral, it’s very friendly and there’s a few how to guides.

And you’ve chosen a good loco to start with, as it’s size makes it very easy to have all the rc gear and a massive battery onboard, I’ve converted mine, and it was easy

Dan

Most if not all accucraft rolling stock includes a second set of different gauge axles in the box, There is a steady2nd hand market on eBay and various Facebook groups for the spare unused axles

Hopefully you still have the original axles Andy it’s an easy swap for you, I have an accucraft live steamer and the wheels Can be adjusted on the axle for different gauges

Dan

Steam trains and cake for breakfast!

Must be Paul’s idea of heaven or not far from it,

Dan

If you want lots of meandering curves, just use lots of lgb r5 or even r3 curves ( r4 doesn’t exist). I’ve done that on my gscale railway answer it comes out quite well

Just google or YouTube Laverstock garden Bahn and you should find some pictures

Dan

Most signalbox have a ups (uninterruptible power supply) fitted, and/or generator fitted, this keeps the box going

On all SSI installations have a Furse unit ( it’s a combined fuse and surge unit) this limits the damage a lightening strike does,

It’s usually the on the ground kit that suffers, or if you lose both of the SSI data links then it’s game over, all the equipment is designed to minimise the fault to smaller area, and prevent too much damage.

If you get repeated strikes, then you get the most problems

Dan

Have you considered Salisbury west yard, there’s two parallel bridges, one is the mainline, the other is just part of the train are sidings?

Just look for cherry orchard road Salisbury, it does just mean the question of sidings on a bridge

Treadles work on a mechanical system, the flange pushes down arm, that breaks a contact and then makes a contact,

They have a small amount of hydraulic fluid in, which allows you to adjust the time that the arm takes to return to its normal position

There normally set for 7 seconds, but can be set for anything between about 2 and 30 seconds.

Axle counters works by making an electromagnet field, which is then interrupted by the metal wheel passing through, the electronic then registerd the amount of interferences and send this to a machine called an evaluator.

This is fed by axle counters as each end of a section, and when the count is 0 then the section is clear,

One evaluator can work with many sections, and you can share heads, so two adjacent sectiions only need 3 heads,

Don't forget the colour difference! Yellow for standard strength green for extra strong.

Or at a resignalling project the contractors were told that they had fitted the wrong colour magnet and were told to replace it- they just tried to repaint it instead!