Bachmann Lil' Hauler- battery set up

[CoggesRailway]

Hi I notice a few of us are messing about with conversions on the bachman lil hauler. I thought I would share the battery side of my conversion incase my experiments are handy to anyone.

I have set mine up with batteries. I have no speed control just for a DPDT. I found that five AA cells are easily lost in the side tanks. This provides an industrial like pace for the loco. The video I did on you tube had 8 cells which also fitted but are too fast for single switch set up. I had little use for the three spare so I left them in there unwired as it was easier than taking them out. So i guess that means 7.5-8.5v will give an appropriate speed.

In terms of run time i ran 5 LGB tippers with concrete loads (so quite heavy) behind the loco on generally level track for 2.5 hours before she started to slow. The batterries are rated at 2800mah.

Hope this helps someone.

 

[steven large]

hi i used my ni cad recharge 12 volts battery to run the motors with out speed controlled and cirucaty board.. 4 HOURS........hide the battery inside the tender tht i scatchbuilting it...with toggle switches....

 

[Enginehouse]

In this case would it not be a simple matter to add a receiver with BEC and a speed controller into the tender with the battery and so have full R/C and a driveable locomotive? I have done this with most of mine when converting from rail powered drive to battery power. Where a loco is small and a tender is not possible, or would look stupid, a works van does the job beautifully. An idea that I picked up from the previous forum Gscale Mad and saves a small fortune in battery packs for individual locos, not to mention the bad language when trying to fit a quart into a pint pot