I see yet again, beginners being encourged into Galvanic Quackery by the trackpower brigade! Sheesh WHEN will they finally discover that their dated and outmoded for of propulsion is NOT the answer! IT only serves to dissapoint the newcomer into thinking that their trains will actually run. Almost is bad are these people who insist on operating their locomotives by so called “radio control”…the only TRUE form of HANDS ON control is DIGITAL Battery. Trains powered from a battery and just a flip of the switch away it goes…no loss of control…no interfereance…and no need to clean track…stopping is prototypical in that one follows one train and uses ones digits once again toflip a switch and stioop…then yet another digital move to revese direction. Why Digital control can even be used to operate turnouts, or all manner of accessories!
…donning protective gear…
If God wanted us to fly, we would have wings.
And swim, we would have fins and gills…
Then why do all the manufactures put track power pickups in their enjins, instead of batteries and a controller???
…Getting ready to lay about 500 feet of wire, install a switching control panel, bury conduit, bore a hole in the basement wall, among other things to get track power to my new layout.
jb
"Then why do all the manufactures put track power pickups in their enjins, instead of batteries and a controller???’
Why do you always give me such easy questions?
The answer is simple, and obvious:
They have to build to the lowest common denominator.
For folks who cannot figure out how to do it any other way!
Why do you think they added skates?
For folks who couldn’t figure out how to keep their track and pickups clean enough.
I mean, look at the industry they have supported:
How many outfits make power supplies, some over 15 amps?
How many track-power control systems are there?
Rail clamps.
Track cleaning cars of all ilk.
Hell, they even help the drywall industry by getting folks to buy pole sanders.
Brass!
Stainless!
Heck, I can run my stuff across the floor with NO track should the need arise.
What I like about my track power is that ALL of my locomotives are ready to go all the time. I don’t have to decide the day before what I’m going to run to be sure the batteries have a charge. I’ll never be disappointed because I want to run a particular locomotive and the batteries are flat. I don’t have to watch the time to make sure my locomotive has enough juice to “get home”. It’s a whole lot cheaper than buying batteries and recievers for several dozen locomotives. I hate battery cars. I personally think it looks tacky as hell to see a darn nice looking train until you look at the first car behind the locomotive…no top and showing it’s guts to the whole world, bulky wires all over the place, and unable to be switched! Yuk!! 
I also don’t have to worry about house fires nor do I have to worry about proper battery recycling and disposal.
Does that mean I will never have battery operated trains… Heavens NO! I’m very seriously planning on modifying some for battery power. This will allow me the flexability to run on non track powered layouts, have better control for snowplowing operations and allow for some limited mulitple train operations.
Long Live Track Power!!
Hey Bob, how’s your asbestos underwear holding out??? 
Warren
Bart Salmons said:Bart, ;)
I see yet again, beginners being encourged into Galvanic Quackery by the trackpower brigade! Sheesh WHEN will they finally discover that their dated and outmoded for of propulsion is NOT the answer! IT only serves to dissapoint the newcomer into thinking that their trains will actually run. Almost is bad are these people who insist on operating their locomotives by so called "radio control"....the only TRUE form of HANDS ON control is DIGITAL Battery. Trains powered from a battery and just a flip of the switch away it goes......no loss of control.......no interfereance...and no need to clean track.......stopping is prototypical in that one follows one train and uses ones digits once again toflip a switch and stioop....then yet another digital move to revese direction. Why Digital control can even be used to operate turnouts, or all manner of accessories!
Who is doing such evil things? There should be a law against it!
PS Still have my stubborn mind set on running DCC in the Garden, but TOC will be the lucky man to fit my rotary and the diesel/electric pusher with battery R/C. Just as soon as I get things built! 
It allows me to run all of my locomotives until such time as I can afford to have them converted … having not been dequacked from the word “go.”
It also allows for a “buy in stages” program, where one can purchase and operate a locomotive while putting together the wherewithal to install the onboard galvanic bits.
Whassamatter, getting cold up there in the hills, and you needed some extra flamage to warm up the morning?
Matthew (OV)
<Why do you always give me such easy questions?>
Aha! It’s all a conspiracy! (By the manufacturer’s.)
They could easily sell battery power, remote controlled enjins.
But they won’t. More call for track cleaning stuff.
Mebbe they should sell their lokies with a switch that changes from batt to track. All the necessary wiring and guts inside for easy drop in batts and go.
Then what would Dave do? Oh well, he’d have all the old models (pre-batt/track) to maintain.
Except the switches some provide for the purpose only lift one side…
Funny. All my locos are ready-to-go anytime I want.
Been running today, no less.
I wait for the power to go out, so I don’t have to answer silly, obvious questions, and run trains!
Gee…power out…run trains…how does that work?
PING!
TOC, some of us do live in civilization where we can expect power 24/7. We don’t have to share the generator with the cave next door…
Warren
Warren Mumpower said:Share? With cave next door? Let Ogg get own hamster-wheel generator from Kave-mart.
TOC, some of us do live in civilization where we can expect power 24/7. We don't have to share the generator with the cave next door..... Warren :D
Well I don’t even have any track down yet and I know that On board battery is the way to go as for all the wires and stuff, well it wasn’t to hard to hide and or disguise. I am not familiar with the terms lokie and enjins so I googled them and found this for lokie www.lokie.net/ and enjins turned up nada.
I believe both have their place, but not my place. I vote for Battery and R/C, besides it will be way more fun. Flame away.
hehehehehehe
I’m going with track power, at least to begin with. It’s the only way to get up and running quickly and easily, and if it doesn’t work out I can always go to battery power later.
Frankly, I’ve been disappointed with almost every product I’ve ever owned that used a rechargeable battery. My camcorder never gets used anymore because the flippin’ batteries never hold a charge for very long, so they’re always dead when I want to use it.
I have a portable spotlight that also won’t hold a charge for more than a couple weeks or so. Luckily I don’t need it often, and only when I’m going camping, so I can usually plan to have it charged up before I leave.
That’s my biggest fear of using battery power for trains – I don’t want to end up never being able to run them because they’re never charged when I need them.
And charging is a pain! Some (most?) batteries can’t be left on the charger past a certain number of hours, so you have to schedule your time around in order to be there to unplug it, and hope you don’t forget. That’s way more of a commitment than I want to give an inanimate object! Worse yet are the batteries that are so fussy, if you don’t fully drain them and charge them exactly right, they get the “memory effect” and are ruined.
The only decent rechargeable product I own is the launch controller for my rockets. I don’t know what kind of battery they put in it, but it holds a charge for months. It’s not something that gets a constant power drain during use though, so I don’t know how it would work in a train.
BTW, one manufacturer has already tried selling battery-powered trains. Remember Bachmann’s original Big Hauler? What a piece of junk that was.
OK!!!
I will open the book on how long it takes for Ray to get with battery R/C.
Just bear in mind he is in Gods little acre of So Cal and the weather will play little if any part in the decision. Track power will likely not be a factor.
My betting is it will be because of the simplified operation battery R/C offers and the ability to run multiple locomotives on the same track at the same time without any complicated wiring.
Plus you can run on ANY same gauge railway without having to worry about DCC and DC conflicts.
Battery technology has really leapt forwards in the last couple of years.
The biggest advances have been made in chargers so that mischarging is no longer a factor.
You can use the new hi capacity “AA” NiMh cells provided you don’t want to draw more than about 1 amp. They are not designed to give more than about ½ an amp continuously. Yes, I know they can give more but it will be at the cost of much less battery life in terms of recharges.
Actually I have a foot in both camps now that I am releasing a new fully filtered linear flat line 10 amp R/C trackside controller.
The new RCS website will be fixed over the weekend then I can announce some other new stuff.
Wow!! If I had all the problems with my battery power + R/C locomotives that those of you who don’t use battery power + R/C have, I probably wouldn’t use it either!
I have around 50 years in smaller (H0, N and 0) scale indoor layout building and operation. When I was ~6 years old, my father allowed me to hand him tools while he scratchbuilt an H0 scale 0-6-0 brass switcher. Been model railroading ever since. I am in the systems automation business, using a wide variety of electronic and other controls. I am reasonably expert in simple and advanced D.C. block control for both large and small layouts of every variety. I don’t have direct experience in DCC, but have read a great deal and followed its development.
When I moved to outdoor LS in the early 1990s, I worked on track power for a very short time before deciding there was a much better way. That was well over 12 years ago. After trying a couple of different R/C units (that I still have and will still run my Delton Mack Railbus), I found RCS. I have had perfect performance from my totally self-contained battery power + RCS radio controlled locomotives. One Bachmann 36 ton Shay and one Bachmann Centennial 2-6-0 which also has a Sierra sound system. Several more to convert as the layout progresses to needing more motive power.
Yes, the first set of batteries in both the Shay and 2-6-0 had to be replaced after ~6 or 7 years of service. That took about 30 minutes for each locomotive.
As to charging, I currently use NiCads and just put them on the RCS provided charger that uses a Radio Shack wall wart. Never over charged, damaged, nor gotten the batteries warm, even when I forget to turn the charger off for days or weeks. I do now use a simple timer that is automatically set to turnoff after 24 hours, but it really isn’t a requirement. I expect future units will use NiMH batteries with the appropriate charger. That especially in the Climax where I want sound and the space is very limited.
I want to be able to just run the trains. No wiring, control panels, indicator lights, block isolation, track joint maintenance, track cleaning, locomotive wheel cleaning, programming, code matching, power supplies, ground fault detectors, etc, etc, etc. Just a locomotive with a dedicated eight button control handpiece that easily fits my shirt pocket. The first four of the eight buttons control direction (including lights), speed up, speed down, and stop. The controller for the sound equipped 2-6-0 uses the second set of four buttons to control the whistle, bell, and blowdown, with one spare. All control is realtime. Range is excellent.
I use modular plywood transport boxes with saw cuts for rails that mate to a track at the end of my engine house. I run the locomotives right into the boxes and put them on a wagon to move inside for charging and storage. Just plug the charger in and let it go.
I use pneumatics (previously Del Air and now EZ-Air) for TOs that are hard to reach, along with some manually operated Pettibone Mulliken high level switch stands for special junctions. Operators walk with their trains. The only wiring on the layout is for building, street, and pathway lighting. Real simple!
This arrangement does make for “Happy RRing”,
Jerry Bowers
P.S. I just got ~80 yards of dirt from a construction project on the airport that is my front yard. It now needs moving to the RR in the courtyard and backyard. I own a 4WD Kubota diesel tractor / loader with a ‘two wheel barrow’ capacity bucket, so the labor is cut down, but it is still a lot of dirt to move and place. Hoping to get it done before the rains start in November.
J.
I got absolutely nothing agin’ bat/rc powered lokies.
In fact, as soon as Dave or Tony says that RCS will cohabit with Phoenix sound, I will talk to TOC about converting my Sumpter Mallet.
But having said that, I am setting up my layout for track power, cause I didn’t win the lottery to convert a dozen or more other lokies I own. And most of the visiting enjins aren’t batt/rc either.
I hate, abhor, despise batteries also. Won’t keep a charge, melts my charger, lasts about two minutes, and every other freaking thing. That’s the experience I have with batteries.
By gosh, there had better be “new developments” in battery technology for me to convert any more than the one unit.
That will be my “test model”. If it doesn’t perform as Dave says it will, I will scrub track the rest of my life.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it!
jb
I have a corded drill. I have a cordless drill. Guess which one gets used the most? Hmm, I’m not even sure where that corded drill is, now…
I used to hate batteries as well, but after evaluating the alternatives, I went with battery. It allowed me to run my train and test the track as soon as I had put down my first 5 foot section. I haven’t had any problems with charging; batteries are charged in place in the tender. I don’t know how long a charge lasts, as I’ve never wanted to run more than three hours. I don’t know how long the batteries last, as I’ve only had them four years.
I had track power inside and had problems, even with large scale. You guys must live in special places to be happy with track power outside; you should feel very thankful. EVERY track power layout I’ve visited has had track power problems during my visit. No exceptions. Hmm…maybe it’s my presence that throws the track electrons awry…
At any rate, I sure am happy with the battery/RCS combo. If track power makes you happy, go for it.
Prolly gonna be a lotta track scrubbin’ goin’ on in Eastern Washington…
Thats it!!! Bruce is infected with GREMLINS!!! Wher ehe appears…gremilns follow…no one feed him after Midnight!!!