Excuse this question if it’s goofy but I don’t even know if such a thing exists but I have some work to do on some old engines and will want to test them on the work bench and not have to go back and forth to my layout. Is there some kind of mobile battery device that you could wire up to an engine to see if it’s running?
I’m not sure what scale you are modeling or if you want to see the engine run or just the motor turn over.
A 9 V battery ought to make something happen in HO or N. You could buy a wall wart, those plug in the wall boxes that give you 12 volts DC and rig up a test track or aligator clips or probes to touch the motor contacts.
Along with what Henry suggest, I have an old power pack I use. Two wires, with alligator clips on the ends, and a short piece of track, on the bench. I also use this, along with a multimeter, to test for stall current.
Mike.
Yes HO scale so I could just use a 9V battery? Never thought of that. I don’t have a spare power pack but I guess I could go out and buy an old one cheap from the used hobby store. I guess a few pieces of track make sense to confirm it’s picking up the voltage from the wheels intead of just seeing if it has life.
All good suggestions, thanks gents.
If you plan on doing it often I would suggest picking up a used power pack off eBay.
I have made all kinds of test leads for my bench power supply as well as a 3ft 1” x 2” with a section of flex track for testing.
I also buy cheapo digital volt / amp panel meters off eBay to make testing easier.
My go to glue is Amazing Goop and I use it to glue the panel meters to my power supplies.
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I use a regulated DC power supply set to 12 volts. You can get Chinese ones on eBay for about $60.00, and they are good enough. This one was less than $50.00 a couple of years ago. I have verified the readings with a Fluke DVOM, and they are spot on!
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I run test leads to the locomotive to make tests.
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-Kevin
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If you are using DCC - just remember to NEVER connect DC power to the motor terminals if there is a decoder installed. It will prove if the motor works or not, but it will also fry the decoder. It’s OK to apply DC to the wheels/track pickup wires, except for some really old DCC decoders that couldn;t work with DC, but it may or may not make the motor turn because the decoder can be configured to ignore DC.
–Randy
I have been using HO trains for some years and keep an old power pack handy with two meters at one time.
http://www.trainelectronics.com/Meter_HF/index.htm
For DCC, I cobbled together some parts and an eight pin socket, can motor with a flywheel, couple LED’s 1k resistors for a decoder tester.
Rich
I use a Woodland Scenics powered wheel cleaner double sided taped to an old MRC transformer. It does the job well and it’s fairly compact. I use this while maintaining my DCC fleet without problems.
Kevin, i guess this was i was originally thinking of but wasn’t sure if it existed.
What’s the foam piece holding the engine?
for a lot less $$, you can get an adjustable buck converter w/ voltmeter ($6) powered by an old laptop wall wart (~16V) with some clip leads that wouldn’t take up much bench space and be portable.
