Large Scale Thomas and Friends go Battery and RC

[0-4-0]

Here at the Charnwood Forest Garden Railway, we open every weekend for the public to come and view as we are located next to the Great Central Railway at Rothley station (A Heritage railway here in the UK). On family events we let the young and young at heart have a go at Driving our large scale Thomas & Friends for an extra attraction.

In order to do this we have converted Thomas, Percy and James to Battery power rather than track power and Radio Controlled. To do this we have fitted the following to each of the engines...
1 x Saturn 2.4Ghz transmitter and receiver
1 x Mtronics speed controller (ESC)
8 x NiMH AA batteries with 4 long battery holders
2 x DPDT miniature toggle switches.
1 x 2.1 DC chassis socket.
Also a SMART charger to charge the units - we already had three so we were ok. It costs around £100 a loco to do but in my eyes that makes them 100 times better as you are not fixed to one point of driving - Which comes in handy on a big layout like ours where not everything is in sight from the main control cabin.

Here's a video of them in action with our bachmann circus train.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5I3yqmO_HA  

Emily is our next large scale engine which we already have on order, we plan to do the same conversion to her as well. I don't think it will be long before we are seeing her in shops here in the UK, from the information we get from our dealer, it'll be just over a month. I am very much looking forward to getting the brake vans as well. I'd love to see the mail train come out in large scale but we can only live in hope!

Thanks!

[Churchill8F]

Nice, have been looking at these items myself as I fancy building a garden railway with British styled items.

Don't suppose you have any reference pictures of the set up installed in the chassis do you?

Jack

[0-4-0]

Nice, have been looking at these items myself as I fancy building a garden railway with British styled items.

Don't suppose you have any reference pictures of the set up installed in the chassis do you?

Jack

At the moment no. I hope to take plenty of photos and record the conversion to battery on Emily however which should be here in the UK at the end of next month start of August. I'll add the video and pictures to this thread as it gets done.

Thanks for your interest.

Scott.