Last Saturday I went to a clinic showing how to convert industrial switchers to battery power. You don’t need a lot of electronics, or a lot of batteries, as these things don’t go fast. High Speed they are NOT!
It was very interesting and got my garden railroading juices flowing.
When I got home I started rummaging around in my train shed, and found an MDC industrial switcher and began converting in.
I did some cutting and fitting, found room in side for a 9 volt battery, and began (not finished yet) putting LEDs in the head and back up lights. I also painted the beast to hide that goofy orange color.
I plan to build a small lightweight track cleaning car to pull behind this thing to clean my track for my REAL locomotives. Ideally, I’d like to install a battery charger operating off of track power. Use batteries to start out, when the track is dirty, then run it for a while to recharge the batteries for next time. But that’s beyond my pay grade!
I’ll send a long a picture when it’s done.