I have been researching battery assistance power for things like Wyes and Balloon loops.
I have contacted Railpro and they say batteries are Dangerous. Is this true?
If anyone has or had Battery powered locomotives in the past please tell me your experience.
Battery powered locos are available since decades and see a kind of resurrection theses days as “dead rail” and R/C controlled locomotives become more and more popular, not only in the big scales. Batteries are not dangerous, if you take the same care as with any battery powered device.
I have never had any problem with batteries other than leakage.
Some are worse than others, but always check your batteries if you haven’t used them in awhile. I also remove my batteries when I know I won’t be using them for awhile.
Paul
High capacity Lithium batteries can be dangerous because of their high current shorting capacity. I use lower capacity Lithium batteries (600ma to 1 amp AA size) for my passenger car lighting and never had any problems. The max current I use for lighting is under 80ma at 4 volts, I use a resettable 100ma fuse between the battery and the load.
I have experimented with the high capacity (4amp and higher) Lithium batteries both protected and non protected, I think that the protected batteries are safe. They have an internal single shot fuse, if you accidently short the battery it’s a goner. The high current non protected can and do explode when shorted.
Beware of eBay Lithium battery ratings, most are not even close to the listing capacity, I have a very good Cadex battery analyzer and only Sony, Sanyo and Panasonic batteries have correct listed capacity. I’ve bought over 30 “High Capacity Batteries” (4000mah to 8000mah) off eBay and none of them have had more than 12% of the listings ratings. The Red 4000mah 18650 cells have 380mah capacity. I return all of the batteries that don’t come within 10% of their advertised rating for refund, that means all but the big name brands.
EDIT:
There’s a video by EEVBlog on Youtube where he takes apart some rechargeable cells and finds that in at least one case, the D cell size is just a shell around a AA cell! Most of the C cell ones are a case around a AA.
Cheap, poor quallity LI-ion and LiPo batteries can be dangerous as they will not have proper protection circuits which prevent overheating and overcharging, which is what leads to them exploding. Properly constructed ones are no more dangerous than a standard alkaline battery. Unless you drive a nail through one, or otherwise physically damage them.
–Randy
Batteries have always had a potential of a problem but for the most part they are fine. I would worry more about your phone battery, but if you get into lipo’s ect. make sure they have the protection circit, like make sure!
did they tell you which kind?
obviously, compact rechargeable batteries are safely being used in phones, laptops, …
i had read about different issues with types of lithium, lithium-ion, lithium-polymer, … batteries. Crystals develop within the battery while recharing that can result in shorts. But a newer type of lithium battery overcame this problem.
Batteries have exploded in flight and caused jetliners to crash. Batteries have exploded in vaping devices and severely injured users.
Not ready for prime time, IMHO.
There are batteries in each cardiac pacemaker. Aren´t we exaggerating the risk of batteries in locos being dangerous?
Are batteries safe? Yes. [:|]
Is dead rail safe? No. [(-D]
Rich
Aren’t a lot of garden railroads battery powered?
If you want more information on Lithium batteries check out this YouTube link.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=most+dangerous+battery
Batteries are safe if handled correctly but if not ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
We may have some batteries around here. Or at least we have bats in the trees.
ROARING
Aircraft - faulty design in the aircraft’s OWN batteries.
Vape devices - half the tiem those are people modifying the device with some crazy huge battery or high current coils to get more vapor - see, adequate overcurrent protection, which I’m willign to bet most of those DIY “more vape” mods show you how to defeat. SUre it’s safe…until defeating the protection makes it not.
Li-ion and LiPo batteries have been used in laptops and cell phones for years now. Apart from Samsung’s very public failure (again, poor design to shave a few cents), there have not been many issues. I’ve had a small drone and an RC plan, both have LiPo batteries. I don’t cower in fear when I charge them up. The drone in particualr has a battery nearly small enough to fit in HO scale - it’s one of those “launch it from your hand” sort, not one of those big fancy high power ones with GPS and all that.
–Randy
I’m not sure just what you are enquiring about. Are you looking at battery-powered locos, or powering the rails of a reversing section of a wye or a balloon loop?
In the latter case you would only need a relatively low capacity battery to power the track whilst the train traverses the reversing section - an interesting concept that i haven’t seen addressed before. Never-the-less I think you would still need to provide some protection to avoid reverse polarity conflict.
Yesterday, I had to replace a smoke detector battery. I found a new-in-the-box Duracell 9 volt, a common battery from a fairly new package. The detector’s door wouldn’t close, so I looked at what was wrong and the battery itself was swollen. Garbage can time for that one.
I wouldn’t put batteries in trains. Losing a cheap flashlight to a leaky battery is one thing, but losing a locomotive is much worse.
All brands of alkaline batteries now leak, some more destructively than others. They didn’t used to be like this. What’s different? Mercury is no longer allowed to be in them. Mercury acted as a stabilizer.
Since they aren’t really rechargeable, they aren’t suitable for powering trains (except kiddy floor toys) anyway.
–Randy
I can say with relative certainty that batteries are not safe to eat.
My point is that whether they are safe or not depends on what you do with them. I believe soldering directly to battery terminals is not recommended and dangerous.
Telsas catch fire with regularity. Nobody is accusing the owners of modifying them, I assume it’s due to poor design or component suppliers who are delivering not-up-to-spec batteries to tesla.
The posts about fake rechargeable batteries were news to me, and interesting.
So I think the answer ilies somewhere in the middle - blanket statements that say there’s no danger and blanket statements that say without qualification that all batteries are dangerous are both too extreme.
Batteries can be used safely, and they can be abused and used unsafely. Don’t be stupid, don’t assume everything is up to its published spec, test for conformance, engineer conservatively and you should be able to avoid burning the house down.