RCS and Phoenix P8 into the new Bachmann Climax.

[Tony Walsham]

This last week it has been my privilege to install my RCS R/C and Phoenix P8 sound into the latest Bachmann Climax.

IMHO the new Climax is one of the best engineered Large Scale locos it has been my pleasure to work on. Everything simply fits inside the tender.  No need to make any changes to the stock Bachmann wiring. Period.
For a track powered R/C loco the installation is very easy.  It certainly is virtually plug and play.
However, for an all on board battery installation the problem is there is very little, if any room to fit batteries. More on that a little later.
In this instance it did not matter as my customer is quite happy having a permanent trail car to provide the battery power.

The tender shell is easily removed by taking out the four screws that hold the shell to the body.  It simply then lifts off to expose the whole PnP socket assembly.

I located a point where I could carefully drill out an access hole under the floor for the connector cable for the trail car.  Be careful as the space is tight and any slip of the drill could damage the fitted PnP socket assembly.

I secured the cable to the underneath of the rear buffer beam with a loop made from two solder tags with one of the fitted screws. This will enable the loco to be returned to stock condition without leaving any tell tale signs of modification. The cable itself is one half of an RCS # ILC-S2 cable I sell.  These are quite small connectors.  Other types could be used if desired.

Next up was to solder a wire to position J1-5 for the P8 chuff signal.  The single black wire shown in the pic below. That is my only real grizzle.  It would have been nice to have had a screw terminal fitted.

The battery feed wires were connected to the battery #1 terminal shown on the extreme right of the pic.
Also remove the speaker plug shown here next to the on board voltage regulator on the far left of the socket assembly so it can be reconnected to the P8 speaker wires.

Then I simply plugged in the RCS # PRO-PnP ESC motor driver part.


Notice that all the Bachmann switches are accessible behind the sand boxes on the rear of the tender shell.  The sand boxes simply pull out for access.

The RCS Decoder part and the P8 sound together with the programming jack and volume control fit up inside the coal load.
I made a mistake locating the small styrene plate I glued in to hold the P8 controls.  The plate should be glued onto the back side the of the small fan stanchions so the I could actually insert the P8 programming plug.

Then I fabricated a sheet of 1 mm styrene to cover the wiring and keep it as neat as possible.

The ultra small 4 ch Planet 2.4 Ghz RX simply plugs in upside down on the decoder part on the LH side of the pic.
With the RCS # PRO-PnP ESC I supply two lightweight cables to connect the decoder lighting outputs and P8 motor reference voltage to the motor driver part that is plugged into the PnP socket assembly.
The coal load simply fits down snugly onto the top of the tender. The internals are easily accessible if you need to make any programming changes.
Bachmann also supply a similarly sized oil bunker if you prefer the loco to be an oil burner.

What to do about on board batteries. To be honest I don't really know.  I am loathe to dismantle it to fit batteries in the boiler.  I don't really know if that is even possible.
However, it may be possible to fit a small flat pack of four Li-Ion cells up under the roof and try and hide the wiring.  Then comes the problem of charging them.  Perhaps I will have to find that out in the future.

I have only been able to run the Climax on rollers but it is as smooth as any Bachmann loco I have ever tested.
To say the least I am very impressed.

[Bucksco]

Guess that old "super" socket isn't so bad after all, eh?

[Tony Walsham]

Guess that old "super" socket isn't so bad after all, eh?

It was another installer who ripped everything out to install R/C.  Not me.
I have always used the Bachmann PnP socket where they are fitted.  Never had a problem with them.  My past queries have only been about the current carrying capacity of the pins in the motor circuit.  3 amps is about it before they can fail. None of the PnP fitted Bachmann locos will draw anything like that, including the K-27.

If Bachmann ever upgrade the 3 truck Shay by fitting a PnP socket I would suggest they first thoroughly test it with a suitably heavy train the loco can pull, before including it. 
Other than that I don't think there any Bachmann locos that could potentially draw more than 3 amps.  Except possibly the two truck Shay with wheels where the plating has worn off.