davetheroad

Luckily my steam era freight locos don't need to go any faster than a scale 40mph so i find that a 2S 7.4V battery works fine. I was surprised to find my Bachmann 3F 0-6-0 freight loco would pull its expected maximum load at scale 35mph for over 40 minutes with 2 x 70mAh batteries. that is less than 0.1Amps. The 3S batteries are for the passenger locos where i have a minimum scale 60mph speed requirement.

none of my locos so far use anywhere near 2 Amps. The most power hungry is 0.17 amps and some are near 0.1 amps, even pulling a normal length train. Some of the locos use a 3S battery configuration with up to 3 x 220mAh batteries connected in series. The charger can charge 4 of those without problem at less than 1C. the charger even handles little 70mah batteries which is theoretically 4C but the batteries and charger are designed for each other with the same micro connector. The battery plugs into the charger, the red light goes on, some time later it starts blinking. When the blinking stops the battery is at 4.2V.

I have no intention of 'playing with it'. as i wrote elsewhere i will only be using commercial products. Maybe in the future there will be products that can recharge 1000mAh in a couple of minutes. Meanwhile my modest requirements of no more than a 500mAh battery can be met with existing equipment. The other part of the requirement, 'remote' control is already doable in 00 scale and even 'N' if you have the fingers and eyesight to handle it!

Interesting figures when some innovators are claiming that you can recharge a typical phone battery to 70% in 2 minutes. That is 21Amps and the normal ring main socket is 13amp? The figures don't add up. Sub minute recharges are not needed for model trains anyway. Fifteen or thirty minutes is fine which would only need 4 amps?

True but my eflite charger is only suitable for single cell lipos. I can recharge 4 single cells at the same time and the charger will be using a maximum of 1.2 amps or 4 x 0.3 amps. Plug those recharged batteries into the appropriate wire harness and you have a 1S 4P battery pack. i actually use a series wiring harness so 3 batteries gives me 11.1V with a 3S 'battery'

Indeed, much better than giving a 'lecture' in an apparent attempt to rubbish the whole topic. Back to that 3000mAh battery. Using my 0.3amp Eflite charger it would take 10 hours to recharge that battery. If i had a 3amp charger It may recharge in 1 hour. That would power my locomotive for 14 hours which would last for up to a year for my loco use. Using 3 amps to charge a 3amp battery should be no problem as that is only '1C'. Rates of at least 2C or 3C are possible with the latest batteries so we could be recharging in say 30 minutes with a 6amp charger. Actually my charger has 4 independant charging circuits so if I used 4 x 750mAh batteries connected in parrallel I could recharge in 2.5 hours at 1C and 1.25 hours at 2C. Apparently some new battery technologies use different materials which give more efficient chemical reactions which generate less heat, allowing faster recharge rates. Other technologies claim to recharge a phone battery to 70% in 2 minutes. That is 700mAh for a typical battery. That would give me over 3 hours use. If I used 4 batteries in parrallel I am up to over 12 hours use with a 2 minutes charge by using 4 chargers. OK, it is not a sub minute recharge but getting pretty close!

Did you spot my reply "good point about power requirements" !. I suggest everyone checks out emerging battery technologies and then we can speculate about what battery capacity/recharge times will be potentially available in a few years time. If all these news reports are to be believed a typical 1000mAh mobile phone battery will be rechargeable in a very short time, presumably without exploding the phone and burning the house down.

I did a quick google search but can't find any definitive information, other than lots of stuff warning about coreless motors and PWM controllers. My Deltang Rx's use PWM but I guess the 16Khz frequency minimises any problems. I have spent a frustrating day with that old Hornby loco. Fixed the wheel quartering, Fixed the worm rubbing on the chassis, fixed the front wheels rubbing on the body. stripped out all the electrics and isolated the commutator brushes from the chassis. Tested it with a 2S 7.4 volt battery and got a scale 78mph!. The problem is those ancient wheels and the back to backs being about 1mm too narrow for my Peco code 100 points. A spectacular derailment followed as the loco climbed over the point frogs. i think that loco will be ignored for a few months!.

1 and 2 are the main drivers for my experiments. another thought, inclines, steep inclines. I could bullfrog sn... all the driving wheels on a loco, or how about doing the track instead!. my next project is an ancient (2001) Hornby tank loco that a friend gave me. It wont run and not surprising as the quartering is off and the mechanism was rubbing on the chassis at various points. I fixed the quartering, hopefull,y and will try some tests. i wonder how many amps that huge motor will draw?

Very well put. ps - you could run radio control on track power if you wanted at the cost of a rectifier and stay alive capacitor in the loco. pps - I also think batteries are the way to go. With emerging new technologies we may see batteries with several times the capacity and recharge times less than a minute. This within the next few years. there are batteries in the labs with over a 100 times the capacity!!!!.

Cost does not have anything to do with it for me. It is nostalgia, I had an extensive modern image DC N gauge layout and planning all those isolation sections etc etc was just plain boring. Operating it also also involved lots of rail cleaning and the frequent application of the hand of god. Last spring it was all swept away and i decided on a basic change. A new 00 scale layout based on north west England between 1935 -55. All steam engines, not even a couple of diesels. I could have called it Grandads engines. He was a driver with LMS and then British Rail based in Carlisle. I don't remember him as he died when i was 3 and not much information on his career survived the sands of time. I remember my mother telling me he drove the 'Royal Scot'. If so that was a premier crack express train between London and Glasgow!. This was good enough for me. Anyway back to the present. If modern electronics and batteries were available back in the days of clockwork railways I wonder if rail electrical power would have developed at all. checking out the DCC forums here show electrical issues are always there. it seems DCC modellers spend as much time in track cleaning as DC users. I decided to spend some of that time changing batteries. So i was starting from scratch with the layout and decided to give BPRC a try. no wiring!. the engines just move when commanded, no hand of god required and as long as you keep the track free of dust, fluff, spiders, toddlers and cats everything should be fine. i have a throttle, brakes and inertia, perfect. Dont need lights as they were insignificant on british locos, basically a small paraffin lantern. Don't need sound etc etc. All these bells and whistles (literally) will come with time. My locos will work on any other layout, DC or DCC, without interfering with those layouts operation. To sum up. i think if you are just starting a new layout and don't need all those DCC wonder things try BPRC. You don't have to commit to more than one loco and transmitter to try it. Phew, apologies for the rant.

I now have a layout of sorts on which to run my BPRC locos, Pengarigg by name and totally wire free, honest!. I am now buying receivers and buying rolling stock etc etc. I have spent many hours thinking about the run time needed for the locos and worrying about battery capacity. I need many hours between recharges don't I? No i don't!, thinking about how I 'play trains' reveals that in a typical operating session a loco is unlikely to run for more than about 15-20 minutes. By standardising on small single cell micro 'Eflite' type batteries plugged into a 2S or 3S harness I can just pop the batteries on the charger after running the loco. No need for balance charging and no worry about batteries becoming unbalanced during discharge as they will still have 40%-50% of their charge left. No need for complex accounting and book keeping either. These little lipos are available in several capacities up to 220mAh, all with same connector, a larger connector gives capacities up to 550mAh. My Eflite charger has 4 independant charging sockets, each delivering 300mAh. i have started endurance testing the locos under typical loads and to avoid terminal boredom as the train goes round and round and........!. i have bought some little 70mAh batteries. theoretically one of these will provide 1Amp for 4.2 minutes. the results can then be scaled up for larger capacities. Summery of the first few tests are: 1 - Hornby Midland compund 4-4-0 Railroad range second hand 2S 70mAh battery 7.4 volt load 8x Hornby Railroad Mk1 coaches test speed 60mph result - loco started slowing after 42 minutes top speed was 66mph loco draws approx 0.1amps under normal operating load 2 - Hornby Railroad Duke of Gloucester 4-6-2 3S 70mAh battery 11.1 volt load 9X Railroad Mk1 coaches, 2x Dapol LMS coaches, 1x 12 wheel dining car test speed 60mph result - loco started slowing after 25 minutes top speed was 78mph loco draws 0.17amps under normal operating load 3 - Hornby Railroad 'Jinty' 0-6-0 second hand 2S 70mah battery 7.4 volt load 2x Railroad Mk1 and 1 open wagon (to carry the battery) test speed 30mph result - loco started slowing after 37 minutes top speed was 52mph loco draws 0.12amps under normal operating load 4 - Bachmann 3F 0-6-0 tender loco 2S 70mAh battery 7.4volt load 4x railroad mk1 coaches test speed 35mph (loco normally hauls freight) result - test abandoned after 50 mins due to boredom! top speed was 47mph loco draws 0.085amps ps the loco will haul 9X railroad Mk1 without any problem. I find these results very good, especially that Bahmann 3F.. There will be no problem with any of the locos reaching their run times. The3F would be happy with the 70mAh batteries but they are just for testing and a set of say 160mAh is cheaper to buy!. Only 12 more locos to go -so far.

Seems like your layout with 200 'locos' is certainly not a candidate for BPRC and even with DCC must have cost a small fortune in chips! In contrast, my layout under construction with 20 -30 locos has no wiring and should work fine. I expect to recharge about 3 to 5 battery packs per week, each recharge taking up to about an hour.

How many amps do the locos need for starting and continuous running under load? How many volts do you need? there are receiver chips available that are rated up to 3 Amps at 18 volts. No sound yet that I know of but there is provision for lights.

Yesterday i had a reminder of why i am interested in battery power radio control. Having tested my latest Class 150 DMU conversion i though i would give some long freights an airing on Castlerock. I loaded up a class 66 with 18 bogie coal hoppers and off she went, or rather she went when the hand of god intervened. Stopping and starting was a lottery as was slow running and it was instructive to see the headlight flickering as the shed proceeded at a fair speed along what i thought was clean track. I fired up a couple of radio DMU's and guess what, off they went woth no problem at all. No stuttering, hesitating at points or hand of god required. i had only planned to convert my DMU's to radio as they do a lot of stopping and starting but so do my main line passenger trains so they would benefit as well. As for the freights I have converted the little class 08 but given the lack of performance of the big boys they might have to convert as well.

Check out http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=17962.0 for my epic struggle to convert a Dapol Class 153 to battery/radio control. I hope this will be the most difficult conversion i have to attempt. It would be good if i modelled in '00' but i would need a 40 foot railway room for that!.

Check out here http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=17962.0 For my conversion of a Farish class 158 to battery power radio control

Check out http://freerails.com/view_forum.php?id=45 this appears to be the most comprehensive discussion area for radio control and battery power. There are several there who model On16.5. At least at that scale you have a good chance of fitting everything in the loco. There is no international agreement and I don't know of anyone thinking of defining standards. From my limited experience it looks as if the nearest to a standard is systems such as those produced by Deltang http://www.deltang.co.uk/ which utilise the same technology as model planes, cars and boats using the 2.4Ghz band. These systems use Spectrum DSM2 and DSMX transmitters which makes them very resilient to interference and I suppose is a standard within the radio control hobby. Of course I had to take the hardest path and model in n-gauge where fitting everything in is a challenge, however the 'trains' I have converted run happily on my DC layout without any brown outs or assistance from the hand of god. In fact I only turn the power on so the controllers aux output can power the point motors. What is good about BP/RC is the converted locos will run on 'live' Dc and DCC layouts. This means you can try a conversion or two without re chipping all your motive power.

Check this link out for my first conversion of a Farish class 08 to battery power and radio control. http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=17291.0 It works really well and i am so impressed that I am going ahead with other locos etc.

Will they produce the 'OO' version first? with the 'N' version following several years later, if at all!.

Happy, Happy The reed switch receivers are now available! I have ordered 3 plus the Tx22 transmitter. I already have the lipos and charger and have been butchering a Dapol dummy class 86. This will be the freight test bed and there will be a dmu as well plus the little class 08

While waiting for the Deltang reed switch Rx's i have been thinking about double headiing and there seems to be a basic problem. This lies with the batteries and not the Rx etc. Say you are using a single lipoly cell giving a nominal 3.7 volts. You start at 4.2 volts then the voltage drops as the battery discharges. This means 100% throttle on the Tx delivers less 'volts' to the motor as the battery discharges. This is OK for a single loco but if you have 2 bound to the same TX channel it does not matter if they are the same loco type and manufacturer. If the batteries are at different stages of their discharge cycle they will be delivering different voltages and the locos will run at different speeds! Or is the Rx sophisticated enough to deliver say the equivalent of 3.1 volts at full throttle throughout the cell discharge cycle? In essence giving a flat discharge curve?

I emailed David at Deltang and yes additional Tx-22's will allow more trains to be controlled. You can also re-bind a Rx to a different tx-22 so i can go ahead with my initial single Tx-22 and a few Rx units for experimental and development purposes and subsequently move those receivers to another Tx if i decide to develop the system. A 'full' system for my layout would need 3 Tx's controlling: 1st one - 9 DMu's of various types plus 3 spare slots. 2nd one - 8 passenger trains including loco hauled, HST, DEMU's and EMU's, plus 4 spare slots. 3rd one - 6 fixed formation freight trains and 6 more permutated as any 6 out of 12 (the layout fiddle yard can store 12 freight trains). the idea is to have 6 Rx's housed in small modules including switch and connectors. These can be moved between different types of 'battery wagon'. I model modern image so there is no room for batteries in the loco. The DMU's etc are not a problem as the Rx and battery can go in the trailer car. My fixed formation Pretendolino and Virgin West Coast use either a Class 87 or Class 90 so a Rx plus battery in the Mk3 coach should work. The freights are more of a problem but lots of modern wagons have room for the RX and batteries. Double heading using a Dapol dummy Class 66 to house the bits and bobs should allow for more trains of funny shaped wagons. This is all going to be an interesting learning experience and although i have done some initial concept planning i still have the initial equipment to buy plus learning all those new skills such as building lipo packs etc etc. all this new stuff means building hills on Castlerock has ceased for now, never mind, i hate building hills!

The Pendolino looks good and i must add building one to my ever increasing list of projects. Is 3D printing viable for producing the definitive bogies rather than a substitute. Having spent all that money on the train bodies is seems a pity not to get the bogies right. What about a power chassis? The Farish class 158 is a little to short according to my calculations. I have thought about the Class 350 as it is a single powered bogie and testing shows it will haul 10 coaches with no problem. A good reason to buy another 350. Pinch the power unit and add a unpowered bogie so you can run a 8 coach Desiro!.