Subject:
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Battery drive / new trains
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Sun, 8 Jan 2006 00:09:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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2156 times
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In lugnet.trains, Jason J. Railton wrote:
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In lugnet.trains, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.trains, Mike Petrucelli wrote:
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The current 9v motor can be powered by rails or a battery box. Just plug a
battery box where the light brick would normally connect and turn it on.
The only thing is it will go backwards compared to normal power by the
wheels. However a polarity switch (or even turning the plug around the
other way) will fix that. While I am not a die hard train fan I still like
the whole 9v standard and hope that they are simply using the same motor
with a new battery box controller. (Turn off the battery box and stick the
train on 9v track and away you go.) This would actually make sense if, as
TLC stated, they do not intend to discontiune the 9v train system but have
both, so that kids can “graduate” to the the 9v trains. What better way
than to have the cheaper battery train sets you “already own” work on the
more expensive 9v as well.
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Eureka, Mike! I think you have nailed it! The spy pics show metal wheels,
suggesting that they are indeed still utilizing the 9 volt train motor.
That side thingie I was concerned about now appears to be the sensor that
gets the signal from the remote unit. It would be nice if the battery box
contained a quick recharging battery that could easily be swapped out.
If this system IS the way you suggest, it would be quite elegant indeed!
And if this all is true, then I would not necessarily consider this a new
system, but rather a clever augment to an already good one!
Though it makes me think that the death knell for metal rail track cannot
be far off. And I seem to remember that that manufacturing process was
the one that TLG wanted to get rid of.
Hold off on buying all of those 9 volt motors, Ben! :-)
JOHN
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I’d just assumed that most train-heads knew that already. John, you need to
open up and talk to the six-wide builders more... ;-) But what does happen
if you connect a 9V battery box to a train motor is that you get not so much
a train-powering device as a train-launching device. The full 9V propels the
motor at very high speed. That’s why I wondered if it doesn’t need six 1.5V
batteries, and just propels the motor at a lower voltage.
If it does take six AA batteries (and they could just fit in 6-wide - lots of
things do, you know ;) , it could obviously regulate the voltage going to the
motor. It could mean the lights (if powered independently - and fingers
crossed they’re on the remote) are much brighter than on 9V trains, and you
could use flashing ones effectively too.
If it doesn’t regulate the voltage, you get a train base that goes
ridiculously fast on its own, but may slow to a crawl under even a small
load. I just hope they’ve resolved the wheel-wear problem.
I’m not sure why Mike thinks the motor goes backwards - surely you can say
that about any of the 9V devices if you turn the connector round? If you
just mean that putting the motor, cable and battery box in a straight line
with the battery box switch towards the tail end makes it go tail first,
that’s not really much of a problem.
Mr Reynolds actually built a battery powered train and snuck it into an
otherwise professionally designed and run layout (note that the following
smiley is for the benefit of the general readership, not Mr Reynolds
himself... ;-) and it caused some near-misses by continuing to electrify the
track it was on, even after it was told to stop. It was heavy enough that it
didn’t immediately launch itself off the track under its own power, but it
did use a single 9V battery in a small box rather than six AAs.
Jason R
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Ah...another reference to my enthusiastic pioneering approach by Jason. The loco
in question is a replica of a real loco called a Motor Luggage Van made as a
single unit for the Southern Region (ex British Rail). As the name suggests, it
was a motorised luggage van - but it featured an ingenious power system.
Under normal use it would pick up 630v DC current through the 3rd rail. Where
the third rail was not present, such as in yards or obscure branch lines, it
could also operate on it’s own internal batteries for a while. The lego model
accurately replicates this system and is switched between rail power and battery
power by a technic switch mounted under the chassis. Of course, as my great
friend Mr Railton pointed out, in ‘battery’ mode the wheels are still carrying
the current and feed power to the whole track with spectacular results.
The model actually contains the larger 9v battery box (6 x AA) which was
deliberate to enable some of the cells to be blanked off to reduce the voltage.
I short circuited the battery terminals and was running the train on 3v I think
- enough to move it at a reasonable speed by itself but a second motor elsewhere
on the layout would bring it to a crawl. This was a great advantage as nobody
noticed the other train(s) crawling away at first!
I still have the loco but will have to dig around for photos. It;s absolute
proof that the new battery trains will cause havoc on traditional 9v layouts.
Jon.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Battery drive / new trains
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| (...) Similar to our trams, which all carry emergency battery power for if it stops at an isolated section. (...) It seems (URL) the wheels are plastic>, so maybe not total havoc. ROSCO (18 years ago, 8-Jan-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Thoughts on Spy Photos of New Trains
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| (...) I'd just assumed that most train-heads knew that already. John, you need to open up and talk to the six-wide builders more... ;-) But what does happen if you connect a 9V battery box to a train motor is that you get not so much a (...) (18 years ago, 7-Jan-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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