My wife and I really want one of these to use as a street car on our layout…
We have three different possibilities for power.
The first is standard DC, which would require isolating the town rail loop from the main rail loop and picking up a suitable DC power set-up.
The second is to convert it to DCC. Has anyone tried this?
The third is to go battery power and RC. I know even less about what would be required for that than for DCC.
The easiest would be going the standard DC, I suspect.
Even though I don’t see a question here, I will offer my experience. I have one that I converted to use a RailBoss 4 with battery. Very easy and a good runner. There’s plenty of room inside for the receiver and battery pack. I’ve got the green one: HLW-09201.
Del, the maker of the Railboss has an advanced critter control you might want to consider. It allows automated station stops that are triggered by magnets. There are random patterns or all stops. the stops and starts are easy on the gears…
https://www.gscalegraphics.net/store/p14/Enhanced_Critter_Control.html
Mark Hadler said:
Even though I don’t see a question here, I will offer my experience. I have one that I converted to use a RailBoss 4 with battery. Very easy and a good runner. There’s plenty of room inside for the receiver and battery pack. I’ve got the green one: HLW-09201.
How does one install this into the HLW rail bus? I assume it isn’t plug and play. How complicated are the wire conenctions?
Mark Hadler said:
Even though I don’t see a question here, I will offer my experience.
I sorta saw a question from his post but I think your experience along with others is what he was asking for.
Check out my website for factual evidence though
I just took it apart! The only “trick” is that there are two brass pins on the sides that hold the roof onto the body. I removed the pickup shoes since I’m never going to use track power. I connected the pickup wires to the motor terminals on the RailBoss board and also connected the headlight to the board. Since there is no tail light I added led marker lights on the rear that switch on when in reverse.
Other that some electrical classes many many years ago in high school I would say I have very basic “electronic” skills and the RailBoss instructions are very detailed. Besides, you have the “power of the internet” to ask questions regarding this type of modification. It took about two hours total to make the modifications. I had to ask on the forums on how to remove the roof as I did not see the pins as being anything but decorative and their actual purpose was not obvious to me.
Edited to add: I also use the battery conversion module as it makes wiring, charging and protection so much easier.
No guts, no glory! (https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)
Thanks.
This may be the wrong place to get into this - however…
If I had a TCS G8 decoder, would it be as simple as hooking up the track leads and motor leads to the board to get the railbus to run with my current DCC?
Those would be the only wires I would need to use to get it to run, without lights or sound.
yep DCC installation way easier than battery, less wires…
plus leave DC mode enabled and it will run on DC also, it will automatically sense DC or DCC… (but real dc power, not PWM)
Greg
Greg Elmassian said:
yep DCC installation way easier than battery, less wires…
plus leave DC mode enabled and it will run on DC also, it will automatically sense DC or DCC… (but real dc power, not PWM)
Greg
Not arguing which system is better for Daniel, but how do you figure less wires? Every non Plug-n-Play system requires at minimum 4 wires; an input power source and an output motor driver. Lights and sound would add the same number of wires depending on on-board or external sound.
charge jack adds 2 or 3 wires… fuse for battery… removable battery needs connector… most people remove track pickup wiring when going battery… oh, antenna location… fun… volume up down switch or knob. Drill holes for programming jack, charge jack, power switch?
Do you want me to go on? I been doing this for a while… I can add DCC to a track powered loco in about the time it takes to open the shell… if you don’t want constant lighting…
No contest between them, especially when you start with a loco that is ALREADY wired for track power.
Greg
OK, some valid points there. Antennas are no longer an issue; they are 1 inch long and tuck anywhere. On newer locos track wiring does not need to be removed and if a source of constant power is available the R/C throttle can utilize the track as a power source. I’ve been doing this for a while too. I dismissed DCC many moons ago as I did not need that level of automatic control for my simple railroad.
I am NOT trying to open this can of worms yet again, but it sure felt like you were. Everyone needs to look at the available systems and choose what best fits their individual needs. For you it’s DCC, for me it’s battery R/C and for others it may be straight track power. No one should try and push their favorite system as best for all, because it’s not.
No cans of worms here, nor agenda.
Attempt at clear honest, unbiased answer to the Original Poster:
We have three different possibilities for power.
The first is standard DC, which would require isolating the town rail loop from the main rail loop and picking up a suitable DC power set-up.
The second is to convert it to DCC. Has anyone tried this?
The third is to go battery power and RC. I know even less about what would be required for that than for DCC.
Then, again the Original Poster says:
This may be the wrong place to get into this - however…
If I had a TCS G8 decoder, would it be as simple as hooking up the track leads and motor leads to the board to get the railbus to run with my current DCC?
Those would be the only wires I would need to use to get it to run, without lights or sound.
So now I am getting grief for answering him and agreeing with him? I’m opening a can of worms?
WTF?
Sorry Daniel, I guess it’s politically incorrect to even agree with you.
Greg
OK, so let’s do the install here if you please, much more “friendlies” over here!
So you got the thing about looking around the edge of the roof and finding the 2 brass pins holding the roof on? looks like one is by the letter “H” in HEAD.
Greg
Greg Elmassian said:
OK, so let’s do the install here if you please, much more “friendlies” over here!
So you got the thing about looking around the edge of the roof and finding the 2 brass pins holding the roof on? looks like one is by the letter “H” in HEAD.
Greg
Are you sure you are on the right site?
I am making no comment, just a little copy and paste from your post at MLS on 11/14;
“After the battery mafia got upset by me saying DCC is easier on LSC hopefully they won’t invade the DCC forum here ha ha!”
Ok, folks. Here we go!
In pic 1, you can see the wiring in the passenger compartment.Just right of center, there is a hole that goes down to the motor block. There are four wires coming out. Blue and grey should be the pickups. Heavier gauge red and black should be the motor. All the other lighter gauge red and black wires are for lights.
All the wiring exits to the left and goes into the luggage compartment.
Pic 1
Pic 2 shows where the wiring ends up in the luggage compartment. In here, all the reds and the blue are wired together and all the blacks and the grey are wired together.
Pic 2
The G8 decoder has hookups for Track +, Track -, Motor +, Motor -, Front light, and Reverse light. It also has 6 function connections, a ground and 3 x 12v+.
According to the Hartland documentation, Red and Grey are positive and Black and Blue are negative. This seems weird to me, as they have the grey (+) bundled with the blacks (-), and the Blue (-) is bundled with the Reds (+). Am I missing something here? Are they using the Blue and Grey leads as returns for the circuit?
So, following the documentation, Blue goes to Track -, Grey to Track +, Heavy Red to Motor +, Heavy Black to Motor -.
I don’t think this thing has any reverse lights. so all red light wires would go to the Front light terminal? And then where do the blacks go? Ground?
Got done on MLS…
went pretty smooth, interesting that the track pickup wires are opposite colors for the 2 sets of pickups, but that’s common, many diesels use the same trucks at each end, one turned 180 degrees so the right and left pickup wires are opposite…
Greg
