Electric Locos

7 April 2020

One of the perceived problems with my layout was that when the steam locos had run out of gas and I wanted to finish the session the stock would need to be moved into storage. I could do with some motive power to achieve that without having to fire up the steam locos again. A radio controlled battery loco seemed to fit that bill and I took advantage of a special offer from Accucraft to acquire an electric version of Exe. I have fitted radio control but on the first test it emitted smoke and stopped working. Fortunately the smoke came from the cheap motor and the much more expensive batteries and radio control equipment seem to be OK. Now that the nicer weather has come I intend to investigate a solution to this problem.

9 September 2020

My first solution was to fit a much more expensive Maxon motor as shown here:

The motor fitted the existing bracket but I had to turn an adapter to accommodate the different size shaft. This got very hot trying to pull 4 coaches up my gradients. I thought this might be because the batteries were capable of supplying 24v but even using the shunt mode supplying 12v did not resolve the problem.

Not wanting to destroy a £50 motor I bought a cheaper one (under £10). I had to turn yet another adaptor. While fiddling with this I noticed that the rubber tube connecting the motor shaft to the gearbox was catching the gearbox some of the time so I shortened it but then it just turned on the shaft.

Finally I replaced the tube with a turned brass connector as shown below:

I had to cut away part of the chassis spacer under the connector and I used Loctite 243 Threadlocker on the 4 screws to stop them coming loose. Today it pulled 3 coaches and my bogie open wagon containing the RC gear for 10 round trips one after the other. The motor gets warm to hot rather than very hot and I think it is acceptable. Having removed almost all the slop in the drive this arrangement might wear badly but I think the next step might be to replace the gearbox and that is by no means straightforward with the chassis as it is.

At the moment my RC gear is being hauled behind the loco chassis in a bogie open wagon as shown below:

I bought the RC gear as a Plug-N-Play setup from Fosworks. The batteries are divided into 2 sets of 6, which fit in the tanks, and a set of 5, which fit in the boiler. They deliver 24v. My original plan was to house the switch and charger socket in the smoke box but I think they will finish up under one of the coal boxes. The ESC-260 speed controller and FRx22 receiver have been stuck to a piece of plasticard and will fit under the other coal box so that the ESC-260 can be pull backwards into the cab to check or adjust the settings. At the moment it looks as though the best setting for use with the 15v motor is speed curve 2. I just have to be careful not to use it at full speed, which is much faster than needed but useful for giving the motor an initial boost.