Large Scale Central

Almost all my dumb questions at once

General Discussion
#21

My 2 Cents worth…

My previous layout, before we moved in 05, was approximately 250 foot mailine and track powered… Before I installed any track, I removed all the rail joiners and packed the with LGB’s electrical grease… My electrical connection was a Bachmann clip on track connector, using a train engineer and 10 amp power pack, and all this worked fine, for about 3 years…

At the 3 year point, I started having an occassional power loss on a section of track… Once located, the power loss was because of the screws backing out and becoming loose, and or coming out completely… The fix for this, was to go and tighten all the rail joiners screws… I eventually ran some wire and made 2 other electrical contacts with the rails, hard wired to the rails… Occassionally, I would still have to go and tighten the screws…

My current layout outside, will all be battery power, or live steam … Inside, will be track power and battery…

No matter what type of railroad you desgin and build, you will always have maintenece to perform, it’s a fact of life…

For what it’s worth…

#22

I have 12 locos now. So i think it would be to costly to fully convert to batt power. I do and I am going to conver one or two locos to batt if I can’t find a good price on one that is already set up that way. I think the batt would be nice so I can go do ops, I can runn on anyones layout and I don’t have to worrie if they have track power or not. I run MRC? 10amp transformers and got them at a good price 125.00 each. One did get smoked this Christmas season but they have told me send it in and they will fix it under warrenty. Would love to get the Bridgewrecks BIG four track controller but that is not in the buget right now.

Rail clamps I am going to startt o put them on because my big 2-8-8-2 keeps pushing the track apart in spots and my LGB track doesn’t like to join all that great to the other brands. I feel rail joiners would be easer then my drilling and tapping the LGB track.

I have to say I realy play with my trains. I will run them for hours on end almost everynight in the summer unless raining and in the Christmas season they realy get a work out. 5 to 7 hours non stop weather permitting and sometimes even it the weather is not premitting. Had a few blow overs this past Christmas.

I asked about the Big hauler and Annie cause I did not know if one of BBTs fixis for Bmann would work on my Christmas Annie. Now I just need to figure out if I can do it or send it in.

I’m hard on my stuff so I try and find deals so if something gose up in smoke I’m not all that upset or out a ton of money. A lot of you guys have stuff I would be scared to run. Its way to nice.

This year is get the landscaping in order, get broken locos fixed and fix a few small problems on the track. I got the big problems undercontroll for now it seems.

As far as cleaning the track… Track cleaning loco and a track cleaning car. They do alot of the work for me and a dry wall sander dose the rest. Its easy, then again I only have about 750 feet or so of track right now.

As far as Andy goes his bark is worse then his bite… :slight_smile:

#23
Andy Clarke said:
My 2 Cents worth...

My previous layout, before we moved in 05, was approximately 250 foot mailine and track powered… Before I installed any track, I removed all the rail joiners and packed the with LGB’s electrical grease… My electrical connection was a Bachmann clip on track connector, using a train engineer and 10 amp power pack, and all this worked fine, for about 3 years…

At the 3 year point, I started having an occassional power loss on a section of track… Once located, the power loss was because of the screws backing out and becoming loose, and or coming out completely… The fix for this, was to go and tighten all the rail joiners screws… I eventually ran some wire and made 2 other electrical contacts with the rails, hard wired to the rails… Occassionally, I would still have to go and tighten the screws…

My current layout outside, will all be battery power, or live steam … Inside, will be track power and battery…

No matter what type of railroad you desgin and build, you will always have maintenece to perform, it’s a fact of life…

For what it’s worth…


I did notice that with the screws but what I do is every so often I lossen the screws and then retighten. I find by backing the screws out and then back in works the dirty stuff out. Plus I have jumper wires screwed to the bottom of the track. I just take the bottom screw out that holds the ties. Then I wrap wire around screw and rescrew in. No soder required. Works great. I enjoy doing this becasue it makes me feel like im working on a real RR

#24

Track power with remote control works well for me. Is it cheaper than batteries? Depends on a bunch of factors–how many locos, how much track, cars with lights, sound, how you like to run. I’ve looked at this a lot and I cant see a clear economic advantage for either. There are definite advantages to battery for some kinds of running

I’ve never found track cleaning to be that big a deal but I’m gradually switching over to stainless track, makes it even less of a deal.

What Andy said is right. You can get away without clamps for surprisingly long if you use anti-corrosive paste in the track joints. I had some track down for well over a year with no clamps, worked fine, n continuity problems whasoever. Clamps are preferable though. Eventually you have to go and redo the joints that have regular joiners. It’s really a question of what’s best vs what works. Slip on joiners work, clamps work better. Brass track is fine, stainless is better if you want less cleaning.

When I started out–@200 feet of track, no clamps, all brass–it was definitely cheaper to use track power and the aristo TE than it was to go to battery. A decent 24 volt 10 amp power supply can be had for under $100 bucks on ebay. Then just buy a transmitter and add decoders. Batteries and chargers are not cheap, and with battery you need the receiver/decoder AND the battery pack. But if I’d built a larger track, batteries might have been a better bet.

I’ll probably end up switching to track powered DCC. IMHO once you have the infrastructure down–well laid track with good continuity, the DCC gear–it’s really cheap to add locos, and DCC is tons of fussy tweaky fun

#25

More dump questions.

Has anyone used one of BBTs Bmann conversions?
The loco I have is a 4-6-0 he had a conversion to make it a 4-8-0 i think. Is it worth the truble or is it just a look thing to make it a 4-8-0?

I know probley best to just ask Barry but hay its slow at work and I need something to read.

#26

While I don’t have a BBT 2-8-0 conversion set up, I do have 2 BBT 4-6-0 drive units that are installed in older 4-6-0 models. If your having drive train problems they are definitely worth the trouble to convert your old engine. If your just getting a 2-8-0 unit to convert a model too, I’d say it would also be worth it because the BBT drives are practically bullet proof.