Kupla thoughts:
If you’re using battery power. And if the battery will need to be charged. What is wrong with charging from the rails as it is running? I don’t see what you gain with “dead rails”.
But.
Should you choose NOT to use the rails to charge the battery–essentially dead rail, signal detection is very simple. You do it like the real railroads. Which have dead rails. And, oh yes, like I used to do with Lionel 3-rail.
Ed
Since we are not talking DCC, 7.4v is more than enough for say my Proto 2000 0-6-0. Also remember we are talking lipo batteries, the new batteries are smaller and more powerfull. Prieto’s new copper battery or the Nano “yolk”, 6 min charge time, 3x power. They also have a new car battery in the works that uses water, not kidding, you think Musk is building his new factory to build conventional bartteries, I don’t think so!
Actually, we ARE still talking DCC as most of the systems mentioned in the start of this thread (aside from Bachmann) utilize standard off-the-shelf DCC decoders. This is a real benefit in that we can still utilize all the features of our favorite sound or non-sound decoder, we aren’t locked into some companies proprietary system (like Rail Pro).
Mark.
Accually we started with someone asking about battery vs DCC, not DCC vs wireless control. That being said a lot of the companys are trying to combine the two. Bachmann has the ability to change things, they have proven this time after time, no they don’t neccisarily make the best stuff but they get everyone else started and they sell alot of their stuff in the meantime. I remember when you had to do alot of work to get an engine to run as good as a Spectrum and remember when On30 was almost non existant, I do!!! Now Bachmann is bringing out their bluetooth stuff, dead rail is about to expand big time, think about it, no more wiring shorts on track or powered frogs, heck, no more track wiring unless you want to and it can run on a DC, DCC or whatever layout.
Have you looked at the other company’s links ? They ARE battery power, but still use standard DCC decoders. So, it’s not “battery vs DCC” it’s on-board / wireless / battery powered DCC !
The blue tooth concept, along with the Rail Pro system are technological marvels, BUT - the downfall is you have to use THEIR proprietary components. The other manufacturers are utilizing standard DCC decoders with their battery powered systems making the actual “control module” already an NMRA compliant component.
Mark.
No, what I am talking about it the original post, not where the discusion went.
The original post was “…battery-powered, radio controlled trains in popular indoor sizes (HO, in particular)?” Isn’t that what we have been talking about ? - battery power, radio controlled engines that utilize off-the-shelf components (DCC decoders).
Mark.
no
This already exists.
It’s called Brio.
The power density just isn’t there for any realistic run time. Even if you took out all the chasis weight and replaced it with lithium you wouldn’t have a realistic run time. 14 Watts is a lot for an little battery to supply over a long time.
Sorry just the way it is.
If you follow any of the Dead Rail forums, most guys are claiming an average run time between 1-1/2 and 2 hours on a full charge.
Mark.
Right now I’m not on board with the idea. Last time it was discussed a few months ago, it was apparent that the cost per engine was well, cost-prohibitive, if you had more than a small collection of engines. I think I recall it was in the neighborhood of $60 per engine so if you have a large collection of say over 100 engines, and actually many people do, then 6 grand (per 100) is the kind of money most of us simply can’t manage to afford, even over a couple years, to convert to “dead rail” operation. Sure, it’s not cheap to convert a fleet of 100 engines over to DCC either but if one bought in bulk, it would be about 1/3rd the cost or roughly $2000 - that could be managed by many much easier over a couple years time. So basically a major difference cost difference for many, enough to easily be a deal breaker - unless you are one of the few where money is no object. Then by all means…
I have to comment on the “dead rail” moniker in the title as others have. It sure seems logical to have live rail so that the system can allow loco’s to charge batteries from the rail than have to pull them off a
Good point. It seems to me that the advantage of dead rail is that reverse loops and wyes can be unpowered, and threfore not wired. Less complexity. But to take locos off of the layout in order to charge them, multiple times a week perhaps, than simply taking the time to wire a reverse loop or wye correctly would cost a lot of time in the long run. To devote power to an isolated charging track would be more complex, since the operator would have to find a way to rotate the locos on and off that track. It would be easier to have the whole layout powered, except for the complex parts. As someone said above, it seems like we are just moving the complexity of what we do from place to place.
As for your second point, I have a simple layout with a small collection of locos. Athough it would be less costly for me to co
Now how long do you run a single engine at full speed? Two hours is way more than average, I would say and I have been a member of a club and have been at many running club dates on other pikes. You speed up and slow down and stop and have multiple engines going at the same time but rairly do you have an enginge go at full speed for two hours in the real model railroading world. Remember the two hours is with a lipo, not the newer batteries coming online. As far as getting stuck with one manufacture, there are many dead rail manufactures now and more coming all the time.
[quote user=“Doughless”]
riogrande5761
I have to comment on the “dead rail” moniker in the title as others have. It sure seems logical to have live rail so that the system can allow loco’s to charge batteries from the rail than have to pull them off and plug them into some power station some where when the batteries are discharged. Of course, then that begs the question as to why not stick with DCC and use a keep alive circuit so engines can easily cross dead spots and never loose power. Keep alive is, from what I read, still less costly per engine that “dead rail” radio control batter operated engines.
There does sound like there could be potential for battery operation with radio control in the future when the techology progesses to the point it is more economical for folks with sizable fleets of engines. For those with small collection, it’s probably more affordable even now. Will it see wide spread use like DCC is? Maybe, but probably not for some years.
Good point. It seems to me that the advantage of dead rail is that reverse loops and wyes can be unpowered, and threfore not wired. Less complexity. But to take locos off of the layout in order to charge them, multiple times a week perhaps, than simply taking the time to wire a reverse loop or wye correctly would save a lot of time in the long run. To devote power to an isolated charging track would be more complex, since the operator would have to find a way to rotate the locos on and off that track. It would be easier to have the whole layout powered, except for the complex parts. As someone said above,
Firstly, if folks are averse to complex wiring, you can still have live rail to charge loco’s with battery packs, but just dead rail the reverse loops which give some fits and have power to the easy to wire mainline sections, that way trains can get power over much of the layout, enough to keep batteries charged. I suppose it doesn’t have to be all dead or all live, in a battery operated engine environment.
As far as the smart phone upgrade merry go round, thats seems to be driven by the whole mindset of “You gotta” or “I gotta” have the newest shiniest highteck phone with all the latest bells and whistles - the charge led by Apple and Android to feed their huge billion dollar money making machine. No one has a gun to our heads - we can get a smart phone and use is for more than one or two years, more like double that and be fine.
As an aside, I saw a BBC interview with one of the migrant’s from Siria or one of those area’s, a man in his late 20’s or early 30’s who had landed in Sweden and was talking about what he stated to be the “typical” migrants aspirations - which consisted getting a nice apartment, luxury car like a BMW or Mercedes and an the latest Apple Iphone. I was like, you come from a war-torn 3rd world existance, and you’ve bought into the American materalistic high status mentality! It made me shake my head and feel very sad that this is what “it all” boils down to now. You get those 3 or 4 things - thats the end game and th
I hear you. I have Meto PCS (T-Mobile) and have 4 phones with unlimited everything, $100 a month for the 4 and no added charges and a promise from the CEO that he will not raise rates as long as he is boss, all 4 are smart phones and cost less than $75 each. I have matched bar for bar on a long road trip with Verizon on an Apple (my sisters phone who was with us), same everything!
rrebell, thats pretty good for 4 smart phones unlimited really. I would like to have an unlimited but I don’t really need it right now - we don’t burn much minutes on the cell towers at all, and can use the wifi connections for calls from work or home. I have a daughter in a private college (for 2 more years) eating 43% of my take home pay (I didn’t have money set aside for her college), so when my wife added her son to our insurance we had to find ways of cutting monthly costs to help off-set some of it. We went to T-mobile which has a, get this, $3/mo pay-as-you-go for 10 minutes or 10 texts, then you pay 10 cents when you go over, which we surely do, especially my wife for her work. But even with that we spend maybe $30/mo now vs. $80 before and only really need to use the internet on wifi at home or at work for services which require it like skype or viber, or occasionally something else. I think if we both needed unlimited talk/text, we could get it for well under what I was giving Verizon before I finally cut their service.
I’m glad this topic has generated so much interest and discussion! My original post was purposfully broad. as I didn’t want to restrict the scope right off the bat.
My perspective is as someone re-joining the hobby, who has not made a substantial investment in any of the current control technologies (eg: DCC or proprietary alternatives), but with a modest collection of ‘legacy’ DC HO equipment.
The interest, for me, is in running a train like a real railroad would. To that end, DC block power always seemed ‘wrong’. DCC is a lot better in concept, but the sensitivity to wiring issues and reversing/shorts is a distraction, and the control signal is still running through the tracks, which means the whole layout must still be powered.
Radio control opens up the possibility of de-powering areas that provide complex wiring issues, though I rather like the idea of keeping power in some areas as a charging curcuit - if done properly, you could provide nearly unlimited run time with very modest battery capacity. A heavy ‘keep alive’ if you will, and with the control signal divorced from the rails, the unpowered sections wouldn’t provide an operational problem.
I think it is true for most of us that we want to run model trains like a real railroad would. I expect some of our “DC camp” folks might beg to differ that they can’t run model trains like real trains - you “poked the bear” there!
But personally I agree with you about DC blocks - from a long time ago, I didn’t like the idea of having to control trains through power blocks which is what attracted me to DCC, as well as many others too I’m sure. And of course we can run DCC wirelessly now which gives a pretty complete feature experience - especially if you add other features like sound, turnout control etc.
I agree, issues like sensitivity, power loss, shorts etc. are definitely something we would all like to be without so there is an advantage to total wireless and removing dependancy for signal and 100% power from the rail. Keep alive goes a long way toward dealing with the worst issue, temporary power loss at a modest cost. Of course the deal breaker for many, especially those with limited budget and large rosters is cost - period. Many of us simply can only look and say, “thats nice” and look at the moths fly out of our wallets and just say “some day”. In the mean time we work with the best we can afford.