Large Scale Central

Wiring B.mann 3 truck S trailing battery car.

Modeling Motive Power
#1

I have a very nice trailing battery/RC car from Del Teparro’s G Scale Graphics. I use it on two of my lokies with NO problems.

The Bachmann three trucker Shays are quite the bargain on e-Bay now and I hope to get one soon without sound or DCC.

My budget does NOT allow for a battery/RC install in the Shay itself.

I would like to use the trailing car.

Do any of you have experience using a trailing battery car with the 3 trucker?? If so where did you wire in the battery leads?? I want to avoid “gutting” the electronics in the locomotive if at all possible. I would do that later when funds provide for an after market Battery/RC/Sound install.

Any help. advice, experiences with this type project greatly appreciated.

I did troll the internet for several days and could really find nothing on how to do this.

I do believe I will have to pull the track power pickups from the three power trucks.

Thank you in advance for all your sage wisdom and advice.

Doc Tom

#2

I don’t have a three truck, but in theory it should simply be a matter of isolating the track power pick-ups (disconnecting them from the pick-ups) then running that same wire to a connector on the back for your trail car.

If you want to get fancy, you could wire in a DPDT switch that functions as a track / trail battery selector. I did this with a few locos early on thinking I may still want to use track power at some point, but have never used them on track power since.

#3

Thanks Daktah. That is a start of a good idea.

Daktah Tom

#4

I redid a Shay to onboard battery for a friend and am purchasing one for myself (I rode the Cass Scenic last week and got the bug).

There are three sets of wires from the trucks to the onboard circuit board. I cut all of those and fed them into a DPDT switch to change from track to battery power, and ran everything back into only one set of wires back into the board. It’s run fine on that one set of wires. If you cut those at the board (in the coal/oiltender on the main part of the locomotive) you’ll only have to run your trailing car plug into those.

I don’t know for sure about the sound ones - I have heard that depending on the control system the sound may be glitchy (supposedly since it’s a DCC decoder it’s flaky on the PWM power supplies that large scale R/C typically uses). I’m personally planning on buying the locomotive without sound and adding it later. I will be going onboard battery with mine – if you want pics of what I do I’ll be glad to provide them.

#5

Thanks Robbie. Ain’t Cass neat!! Loved my time there a few years back.

Would love to see pictures of your work.

When you did the conversion how did you handle the lights and firebox flicker?

If you hook in to the three motor leads only does that leave out lights?

Thanks for continuing this dialogue.

Doc Tom

#6

Tom,

I didn’t touch the motor leads – those were left from the board to the trucks.

I did however take the power pickup leads coming from the trucks and run power from the battery receiver into those. By doing that, all the stock functions still work – even the smoke unit (grumble grumble). As it is this left all the stock wiring in the locomotive – while I’m reasonably competent at this sort of stuff the Shay is a bit complicated for me to do a complete tear down and rewire.

Repeat; I cut the power pickup wires (from trucks to board) and spliced the R/C receiver in there.

Bachmann has a wiring diagram on their site that helped.

#7

Robbie Hanson said: – even the smoke unit (grumble grumble).

Not the world’s greatest fan of smoke units?

#8

Smoke units - great.

Bachmann smoke units - not great.

Smoke unit on battery? Waste of battery life.

#9

Robbie Hanson said:

Tom,

I didn’t touch the motor leads – those were left from the board to the trucks.

I did however take the power pickup leads coming from the trucks and run power from the battery receiver into those. By doing that, all the stock functions still work – even the smoke unit (grumble grumble). As it is this left all the stock wiring in the locomotive – while I’m reasonably competent at this sort of stuff the Shay is a bit complicated for me to do a complete tear down and rewire.

Repeat; I cut the power pickup wires (from trucks to board) and spliced the R/C receiver in there.

Bachmann has a wiring diagram on their site that helped.

Robbie, I think this is the answer. I do have that wiring diagram and will us this. Too bad they didn’t put this PCB in the third truck tender. Doc Tom

#10

Tom Grabenstein said:

Robbie, I think this is the answer. I do have that wiring diagram and will us this. Too bad they didn’t put this PCB in the third truck tender. Doc Tom

Tom,

There are two wires used to run a speaker to the third truck. If you’re not using sound, you could repurpose those to avoid running another connector between the loco and that truck.

In my friend’s locomotive, I added an Aristo style battery plug between the locomotive and tender and fed the wires around the drawbar where the existing plug comes out – I only had to drill a small hole underneath the tender to run the other end of the cable.

Hopefully my locomotive will arrive soon and I’ll take pics as I work on it – I’m trying to decide on a sound and R/C solution still but I’ll figure it out at some point.

#11

Robbie Hanson said:

Tom Grabenstein said:

Robbie, I think this is the answer. I do have that wiring diagram and will us this. Too bad they didn’t put this PCB in the third truck tender. Doc Tom

Tom,

There are two wires used to run a speaker to the third truck. If you’re not using sound, you could repurpose those to avoid running another connector between the loco and that truck.

In my friend’s locomotive, I added an Aristo style battery plug between the locomotive and tender and fed the wires around the drawbar where the existing plug comes out – I only had to drill a small hole underneath the tender to run the other end of the cable.

Hopefully my locomotive will arrive soon and I’ll take pics as I work on it – I’m trying to decide on a sound and R/C solution still but I’ll figure it out at some point.

Again, this is very useful advice Robbie. It is appreciated. I figured it could be done and these are great ideas on how to do it!!!

Doc Tom