azdiane
Member
The local garden rail club has a Christmas setup in a mall, with cute big toy-like G size steam locos. In chatting with the folks it turns out it's a "dead rail" setup, with no electric power in the rails. This lady was raving about it. All the electricity is carried on-board each locomotive in a lithium polymer battery, and all commands, including DCC steam chuff and the literal whistles and bells, are sent via radio control. It saves the modelers everything to do with wiring track power. The electrical pick-up problems that plague all model railroaders are completely eliminated by having the power hard-wired. Wow, what's not to like? Can it be as successful in my scale, HO?
This particularly interests me because hubby and I share a radio control model airplane hobby, and routinely use similar Li-Po batteries and radio receivers in our electric powered flying models. One of our more common large battery sizes, a 2200MaH 11.1 Volt, will fit entirely inside an HO boxcar, and is probably way more battery than would really be needed. I looked at the radio receiver in the big loco, and it's very similar to our flying model receivers, and small enough to be shoehorned into many HO tenders alongside the DCC unit. It seems to me that having to carry one dedicated Li-Po battery "power car" always coupled behind the locomotives, and connected electrically, is the only downside.
Everyone please chime in with any experience you have with dead-rail operations. Surely somebody has done it/is doing it in HO.
Merry Christmas, y'all.
Hugs,
Diane
This particularly interests me because hubby and I share a radio control model airplane hobby, and routinely use similar Li-Po batteries and radio receivers in our electric powered flying models. One of our more common large battery sizes, a 2200MaH 11.1 Volt, will fit entirely inside an HO boxcar, and is probably way more battery than would really be needed. I looked at the radio receiver in the big loco, and it's very similar to our flying model receivers, and small enough to be shoehorned into many HO tenders alongside the DCC unit. It seems to me that having to carry one dedicated Li-Po battery "power car" always coupled behind the locomotives, and connected electrically, is the only downside.
Everyone please chime in with any experience you have with dead-rail operations. Surely somebody has done it/is doing it in HO.
Merry Christmas, y'all.
Hugs,
Diane
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