Connie - installing Crest revolution for Battery Power

[chmaley]

I've just replaced the nylon gear with the brass one, powered the tender with two Hartland power trucks. Now for battery. In older engines I do a lot of rewiring to separate out front and rear headlights from the motors. The Connie booklet suggests that this can be done with the circuit board that can be pulled out through the smokebox. They reference a Lenz DCC circuit board.
Has anyone tried this with Crest's revolution??

chuck

[Loco Bill Canelos]

I have not heard of the method you describe, but converting the Connie to battery power is very easy.

Check out this link.

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php/topic,24016.0.html

All you need to do in the loco is is disconnect the plug in the ashpan labeled "Con 7" which isolated the loco from the track,  everything else is done in the tender as noted in the link.

Cheers & Beers

Bill

[chmaley]

thank you Bill - This is exactly what I was looking for. Now lets see how good I am at doing these things.

chuck

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Chuck,
You are welcome.
I am betting you are better than you think!  Remember the first time is the toughest .  The main thing is to work while fresh, and to just take it step by step.  If you struggle over a problem, back away from it for a day and then go back in starting with the step just before you ran into a problem.  If all else fails there are a lot of us here who want you to succeed and have fun with our Large Scale hobby, so don't hesitate asking questions here if needed!

Bill

[chmaley]

Hi Bill - I've completed my battery/revolution installation with the Connie. I did put in several toggle switches that allow me to still run it on track power if needed (belt and suspenders kind of thing). It has a Phoenix sound system and I powered the tender as well. The best link - thanks to you - was the RCS link. For a while, the revolution would shut down every time I tried to get the engine to move. Actually it was protecting itself because of the suppression circuit on the motor. This tends to cause battrry receivers to overheat. Once I removed that, everything worked well. Navin should probably reference that in his next release of Crest documentation.
Anyway I'm happy. The inside of the tender does look like a can of worms - not like the elegant stuff you display in GR magazine articles - but everything does work. Thanks again,

chuck

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Chuck,
Glad you got things going!!  Interesting about the problem with the suppression circuit, that is something I did not have when I did mine.  As for the pics in GR, well I always put my best foot forward and tidy things up more than I might otherwise   As for the RCS link we owe Tony a big thanks for his detailed "how to" sequences.

Thanks for letting us know of your success and enjoy your Connie!

Bill