Model Railway Forum

Firstly sorry if this is in the wrong place. When I was last a member of this forum there seemed to be increasing interest in this form of control which now appears to have wained. I have an old spektrum transmitter from my aermodelling activities as,well as,a good knowledge of lithium batteries. I did have a bit of success with an old hornby tank engine and a micron rx although I put battery in a truck behind it. I have quite a bit of old hornby dublo and triang hornby stuff and seems a good way of getting the old stuff to run reliably. I've not started on a layout get but am considering selling up the old stuff except for the odd item with special memories from my childhood and going modern tt or n.

Interest in radio control grew due to the availability of smaller radio recievers and batteries that can bind with their transmitters which seemed ideal. The only downside is that most model railway locos in the smaller scales such as 00 or H0 use 12v motors, and radio control due to the battery availability is more ideally suited to 3v motors or 6v at the most.

There has been a a loss of interest in the recent couple of years mainly due to the difficulties for the small manufacturers of these products in obtaining suitable microchips, as when the technological advancements first came in there was a plentiful supply of these microchips, but a few years later when people started to take interest, these microchips started becoming in short supply, which put off many modellers from exploring this new avenue of train control.

cheers for that. rather though that might be the case. the one i did used a 3 cell battery which equtes to near enough 12 v but then it needs to be balance charger which inpractical terms rwallt means removing it fron the loco. You can of cohrse bump a single 3.7 v cell up to 12 v but its not an effjcient lrocess and i can see limited run times but you could charge throgh a simple socket under the loco. decisions lol

Is the past availability issues of microchips where onecould buy transmitters but not get recievers, and not knowing what battery chargers work on what batteries and with the postal system not being allowed to sent batteries so that one does not know where to get them since Maplin shops no longer exist...
What seemed an excellent idea became complex for those like me who had no experience to know what to buy but also did not know if one would be able to get what one needs.
(Why can't they sell entire kits to power a specific loco such as a Hornby 0-4-0 and include a budget 3v motor which is the same size and shape as the 12v versions so one can get one of these budget locos running quickly and easily to rey out the idea for oneself in much the same idea that they did complete radio control kits designed to beused on a specific make and model of radio controlled boat or car as these certainly were available for RC boats!
I feel if this idea of a complete kit of everything needed was sold including acharger, then more people would be tempted. Maybe a kit to power most Lima bogie pancake motored diesels and maybe include a 3v (Or 6v) CD drive conversion kit? Something whefd complete nocices can start with, so that they can slowly learn as they go along.
The last time I looked which was over a year ago I saw attempts towards this but they did not go far enough as one was still left with many choices without having the knowledge of how to make those choices as one has no experience and doesn't want to make a potentially costly mistake..

intersting. weve been using lipo batteries and brushless motors including cd motors in model aircraft for over 15 years but from a commercial point of view will enough people want to do it to make it worthwhile. most aeromodellers use lipos and there are plenty of couriers who will accept them. one of the models id love to see run again is my dublowest country Barnstaple but it has a ringfield motor which apperas to be part of the chassis so re-moforing isnt an option. My maain concern with the whole thing is battery capacity. i can just about cram enough into Barnstaples tender for probably 20 mins flat out but tank engines are another story. Probably a lot easier with diezels but im steam only

I am wonering about this because if it was a Lima pancake motor, there are kits to convert them to a CD type motor though these will be 12v, but the 6v or 3v motors that look identical could in theory be used with one of these kits, as the main useful component that these kits provide is a new cog to drive the bogies gearing. (I have never tried this conversion myself as I actually prefer the grunt of the Lima motors as they are even if the CD motors offer smoother running. (I want to in principle pull long trains here and CD motors are not really designed for torque. They are designed to principally bevery smooth running).
Now I am wondering if (In theory) with the Hornby Ringfield motors, if anyone made similar convefsion kits or was able to convert the housing to work with a CD motor instead. (Lima pancake style motors are (Once one has removed the magnet) said to be such a close sized fit for these CD sized motors that people naturally started converting them just because being the right size out of sheer co-incidence, they lended themselves as ideal candidates for conversion).
Now I have never masured the Hornby motored design to compare it with a CD motor. In theory, if the Ringfield housing is the same size or larger than the Lima motor housing, then one has a potential space to work from. The main difference between the Lima and Hornby design was how they attached the cog, as with the Lima design, the cog on the motor shaft was part of the structure of the armature and therefore if one had to chage the armature for a new one (When they used to make such spares) it was a very easy job as I once was given a deltic which had been tried on mains current! A new armature (£3.50 in those days), brushes and springs later and the model ran like new!
But Hornby's Ringfield design did have the cog on the end of the motors shaft as a separate item and the motor housing plastic structure was sandwhiched inbetween this, so ideally one needed a tool to remove the cog to have full unhindered access to the armature of the motor. I am wondering if this would hamper (Or maybe the size of the motors internal enclosure) maybe the reason why I have not noticed and CD motored conversion kits made for the ringfield motor desing? (Maybe they are available? I amnot sure).
If one can fit a 3v or 6v motor inside the ringfield enclosure to link it up with the driven gears of thd bogie, then one has the ideal conversion potential to work from.

cheers for that some very interesting points. Id not thought of changing motors but could be a possible solution for some locos. there is certainly a,wide range of cd and smaller brushless motors available for the indoor rc flying market although small reversible brushless speed controllers seem less readily available although reversing can of course be achieved by a switch effectively swapping 2 of the 3 wires round. I think the answer will be to treat each loco as a seperate case according to the space available

No doubt as more and more take on the challenge of radio control of their model locos, more experience will be shared, so more novices will be able to ask questions and get answers to address their needs.
I am quite tempted but a little hesitant at the same time, so I am enjoying learning what I can about such things (Which to be honest isnot a lot at the moment!) but I am in two minds as to if I should give it a go.
Actually I can look again at the various suppliers to see if anything has changed since I last looked about a year ago.

I've only ever tried the Micron RC stuff and it seems to work very well and is compatible with one of my old aircraft transmitters. I dont think their range has expanded much over the last few years but it works and is small enough for 00. The real challenge is fitting the batteries in. I've pretty much decided to go with 3 cell batteries which provide getting on for 12 volts. The down side to this is multi cell batteries need to be balance charged. Most tender locos can take an approx 800 mah battery and the balance lead could be stuck underneath with a bit of velcro. Tank engines are a bit more of a challenge but I think it may be possible to fit 3 seperate cells around the chassis then wire them up to a balance plug accerssible through the cab - possibly. Its all work in progress. I wont be starting on my new layout til i've moved house in the summer so plenty of time to do some experimenting. 7mm narrow gauge maybe and ideal case as there will be much more space for the batteries

The odd thing with 7mm NG is one assumes one has more space but by the nature of the types of locomotive I prefer to model being quite small to begin with and the extra space one would think one has may not be as it first seems.
Llastic bodied models have a lot more internal space than most resin bodied models though resin bodied models have a nice weight to them (Depending on the kit) and some are even made with metal weight (Usually a substitute for lead shot) cast into some resin parts, so while I maybe able to make space for a reciever, batteries may need to take up the area of the drivers cab to find a space for them to fit. (Cabs are slightly larger in 7mm scale but tend to be more noticable if one fills them with batteries!)
Of course, if oneis starting with building a model loco from the start and intending to install radio control before one starts to build it, one does have the advantage of making space by using different chassis or milling out ceftain parts etc, where as if one is to convert a ready made loco things can be a lot more difficult, especially if like me one may have already chosen a different chassis than the one the kit was intended to take which one has already had a battle to get things to fit!
While in theory the kits intended to use the little Hornby 0-4-0's may potentially be easier as they look easy to convert to run using 3v or 6v motors, but I do have more awkward donor locos waiting which look jam packed inside with a large 12 motor crammed into a little 0-4-0 body and chassis, or in one case a small 0-4-0 shunter waiting for conversion which though it runs ok on 12v, was origionally designed to run on 16v DC which due to older design where the motor is built more as part of the chassis, one would need a complete new chassis to adapt or build and even then the space available would rely entirely on building a sizable 7mm scale cab, as the body is so small in its H0 scale form that it is surprizing how when it was made, the manufacturer got it all to fit at all! (Think model was made in the 1950's or 1960's).
Of course, model locos that one can include a tender do make quite a difference in the space one can use, so for some steam locos, this option is a preferred plan should one want to build a 7mm scale narrow gauge radio control loco.
American 7mm NG locos are much larger so do very much offer more potential, but the majority of these are unlikely to fit on my layout, let alone go round my sharp curves!

You mentioned balanced chargers. It is things like that I don't know much about. What chargers to get to use with which batteries etc.I know the theory of single cell, two cell etc but knowing what charger is designed for which battery is something I am not so familiar with, or if as an example I use a single cell battery, which size single cell I should use etc., as though it is an advantage to have batteries of different sizes (I assume larger ones last longer in between charges?) at what point does using a small one become impractical? In other words, if I was space restrained so I used the smallest to find it only lasted a few minutes of run time, it would not be worth meeve trying.... But I would need a rough idea to know roughly what to get before buying.