Recommendations needed. My brother wants to build a small layout around his pond, he wants to acquire a Bmann 3 truck Shay and because he lives in a tropical climate he wants to use a battery power supply. No track power. Now, I know NOTHING of RC, but he wants he to look into it, so I’m going to post it here. Oh did I mention he lives in Laos?
Vic,
“Tropical” is an under-statement 
Laos and L.A.?..so what you’re telling us is your family has never built a snowman?
Vic
I have seen this done two different ways.
NiMH flat or square pack in the boiler replacing the weight. Permanently installed and charged in place. Have the charging port hidden under one of the domes or behind the smoke box door. 14 - 16 V, 5000MAH
OR
LIon sqaure flat pack in the tender. This can be made removable which I favor. If you have a spare pack you swap it out and keep going. 14.8 V 5000MAH. PCB protected !!! Do not buy packs made from some dude in his garage who claims he can save you some money because he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Cost is about the same with either option. NiMH is still a little cheaper. I prefer Tenergy battery packs which can be purchased in ready made packs (recommended, see fire comments below) at different dimensions, V, MAH combinations. Check them at Allbattery.com
Always use a UL approved charger recommended by the battery manufacturer. Not some homemade bastardized charger made from an old drill or electric razor, unless you want real smoke coming from your engine and possibly a full blown house fire.
I prefer Airwire because of their great customer service but most RC systems have equivalent performance for about the same cost.
I like Phoenix sound but other systems are … who am I kidding you can’t beat Phoenix. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
I have had several friends gut the third truck and let it free wheel. Two power trucks are plenty to pull most loads unless your brother has very steep grades and wants to pull really long trains. Eliminating the third motor will reduce the amount of Amps used and allow him to run longer with the 5000 MAH batteries or buy packs with a lower MAH and save some money. I bought the 5000MAH and can run for about 5-7 hours with any of my engines. I could easily have gone with 3000MAH and cut the price in half or got extra packs.
$.02 the going rate for advice. Better technical details will cost $.03 and stupid ideas are still free.
For what it’s worth, and piggybacking on what Boomer said, I use Tenergy battery packs and they are durable and care-free, AND I buy stuff from AllBattery.com because they seem to have good prices and have proven to me at least to be absolutely reliable, AND, one more thing, seriously: buy the right damn battery charger from them. Your brother doesn’t ever want to have a reason to regret his choice of chargers.
If he can get a 3-truck Shay with the DCC decoder factory installed, then all you need to do is get a Tam Valley Depot receiver and an Airwire throttle. Hook the battery up to the power input of the Tam Valley Depot receiver, then connect the rail inputs from the decoder to the Shay to the output of the receiver instead.
Later,
K
Thanks guys, I was leaning on recommending an Airwire system, but since all he appears to want is a roundy round system I was considering recommending him looking into one of these new Bluetooth system as they appear to be much simpler. The biggest hurdle for me is the distance and not knowing what sort of support he can expect if he runs into trouble, that’s kinda why I want to recommend the most easy to set up system.
Just a thought, but he might get better service, if needed from Tony’s R/C in Oz.
Good Luck,
John
That did cross my mind, especially with US/Laos customs