I had an old Big Hauler with very noisy gears, that I bought for spare parts. Recently I found that Bachmann were selling the whole motor block/wheels/gears etc for only 30USD. So I bought 3 of them on my last trip to US and carried them home in my suitcase. (more about the plans for the other 2 later.)
So I retained the original body, added the new motor block and put in RC. I used Hobbyking 2.4kHz gear because it is cheap and good enough for what I want. It has large model aircraft type stick controllers. You can see in this pic, I use the one Tx for two locos (#20 and #25). The speed control is up/down on the right stick. Direction is changed by moving the right stick momentarily to left or right. The left stick only controls volume (momentarily up/down) and on other locos the left/right movement controls whistle, but I didn’t fit to this loco.
Usually I put the batteries in the boiler so the weight is over the driving wheels. But the large tender meant I could fit everything in the tender easily.
I used ten, AA, NiMH, 2200 mAh batteries, soldered together and fitted in as per this pic.
The circuit board in the centre is the Bachmann sound board, which I retained as is.
I then laid all the electronics on a piece of corroflute using hot-glue. There’s the 2.4 GHz receiver, the speed controller (ESC), one servo which operates a DPDT switch for reversing and another SPDT for headlight control, and a second servo which operates a SPDT switch so I can control the volume of the chuff. This all mounts on top of the batteries.
To see detailed info on the servos and how they operate the switches, see my website.
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/satr/2point4GHz.htm
With everything in the tender, I only needed 3 wires between the tender and loco (plus the 2 originals for the wheel cam) - 2 for the motor and 1 wire for the headlight. I used a standard servo type 3-pin plug socket (Hobbyking again – dirt cheap). I cut the 2 wires from the pickups to the motor and soldered on the 2 from the ESC/rev sw.
Items for RC:
Transmitter $15
Receiver 10
ESC 5.5
2 servos 7
4 switches 12
8xNiMH cells for Tx 15
10x NiMH cells for loco. 20
Polyswitch ‘fuse’. 5
Adding about 50% for shipping and allowing half the Tx cost as it is shared, the whole RC cost about 110AUD or 70GBP.
Here’s the circuit….
So I retained the original body, added the new motor block and put in RC. I used Hobbyking 2.4kHz gear because it is cheap and good enough for what I want. It has large model aircraft type stick controllers. You can see in this pic, I use the one Tx for two locos (#20 and #25). The speed control is up/down on the right stick. Direction is changed by moving the right stick momentarily to left or right. The left stick only controls volume (momentarily up/down) and on other locos the left/right movement controls whistle, but I didn’t fit to this loco.
Usually I put the batteries in the boiler so the weight is over the driving wheels. But the large tender meant I could fit everything in the tender easily.
I used ten, AA, NiMH, 2200 mAh batteries, soldered together and fitted in as per this pic.
The circuit board in the centre is the Bachmann sound board, which I retained as is.
I then laid all the electronics on a piece of corroflute using hot-glue. There’s the 2.4 GHz receiver, the speed controller (ESC), one servo which operates a DPDT switch for reversing and another SPDT for headlight control, and a second servo which operates a SPDT switch so I can control the volume of the chuff. This all mounts on top of the batteries.
To see detailed info on the servos and how they operate the switches, see my website.
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/satr/2point4GHz.htm
With everything in the tender, I only needed 3 wires between the tender and loco (plus the 2 originals for the wheel cam) - 2 for the motor and 1 wire for the headlight. I used a standard servo type 3-pin plug socket (Hobbyking again – dirt cheap). I cut the 2 wires from the pickups to the motor and soldered on the 2 from the ESC/rev sw.
Items for RC:
Transmitter $15
Receiver 10
ESC 5.5
2 servos 7
4 switches 12
8xNiMH cells for Tx 15
10x NiMH cells for loco. 20
Polyswitch ‘fuse’. 5
Adding about 50% for shipping and allowing half the Tx cost as it is shared, the whole RC cost about 110AUD or 70GBP.
Here’s the circuit….
