A shout out to Shawn V, Who gave me the knowledge of how to use them. I have three Bachmann climax’s. And it took me under 4 min. to get it battery ready. I have qsi plug and play with there G-wire and nce g cab controller.A piece of cake. I can now run two trains with no problem, In half the time. no more cleaning track YAH!.
Welcome to the wonderful world of battery power.
Been doing it since 1985.
Where did you put the batteries?
Welcome to the dark side.
(http://i690.photobucket.com/albums/vv261/rich413_photos/TheDarkSideHasCookies_zpsa4e69b2a.jpg)
Richard
Tony, Put them in a gondola car. Regards,Ron
OK Ron.
Was hoping someone had at last worked out how to fit the batteries in the new version of the Climax.
Tony, No room in the tender. Maybe in the boiler? Regards,Ron
On the Climax, you have a few options for batteries. First, if you’re fine with 11.1 volts and using a wafer speaker, you can fit the speaker, then the battery pack, then the stock PC board all stacked on top of each other in the bunker.The only catch is that you need to remove the vertical PC board that has all the switches on it. With a little tracing, you can figure out which solder tabs on the edge of the board need to be jumpered to what in order to “close” the appropriate switches. Note: with only 11.1 volts (plenty for the motors to run at a prototypical speed) you need to make sure your control system will operate at that voltage. But this allows you to keep everything in the bunker, and use the stock PNP socket for the control.
As an alternative, a 14.8v Li-Ion pack in a flat 2x2 array (measures 1.5" x 6" or so) will fit in the boiler. You’ll need to do some cutting where the boiler meets the firebox, which means you’ll have to use a strap going over top of the boiler to hold it to the firebox instead of using the four screws from underneath. But this frees up the need to do any kind of modification to the electronics in the bunker of the locomotive. You can fit a larger speaker underneath, and still use the PNP socket to fit the control system of your choice (with 14.8 volts to power it.)
I was originally going to take the first route with mine, but when I decided to replace the boiler with a straight boiler (per the prototype I’m modeling), I decided the batteries would go in the boiler instead. This did make life easier, ultimately. I put the on/off switch and charging jack behind the smokebox door.
Later,
K
Kevin,Way to complicated for me.Haveing a trailing car works great for me. Regards,Ron
I have Airwire, Phoenix sound, 2" speaker and a 14.8 LiIon battery in an old style climax. There’s always room somewhere.
Terry
Ron glad you got everything hooked up with no problems. I find myself running battery and live steam more and more. The sparkies almost never come out. Next I have to hook battery up to my LGB Forney and Bachmann industrial.
Shawn, I just got another battery pack. Going to order two more for back up next week.Regards,Ron