A 6th Video featuring LocoFi is now on YouTube

Soppy, I loved your “thinking outside the box” idea of using the track to connect the battery car to the locomotive. As you yourself, as well as a couple of others have noted, that could be problematic at times, but the thinking outside the box and sharing it was fantastic! That is what I’ve been trying to do, get folks “thinking” and bouncing their ideas off each other.

For more capacity, for either a longer prototypical run time or when powering locomotive consists, as we now have some excellent ideas of how to consist locos with a trailing battery car, I have procured some IMR 14500 LiMN cells and 3S (series) AA battery boxes. Yes, they do make 3S AA battery boxes and the 14500 Lithium cells are, for all practical purposes, the same physical size as AA dry cell (primary cell) batteries.

The weight difference between the 4S 10440 battery pack, with 3 cells/batteries in the circuit and one “rider” and the 3 14500s in their single 3S pack is only 20g or a little less than 3/4 of an ounce. The AA battery boxes are just a tad under 6-1/4” inches long (measured) and easily fit on the floor of the gondola and boxcar.

While I now have the 14500 cells/batteries and the 3S AA battery boxes, I’m not ready to swap them in yet and give them a try, as I’ve eliminated the connector between the loco’s and their trailing battery cars.

I’m thinking of ordering the MicroMark connectors that John Holdos mentioned in the Parallel Consist Wiring thread and give them a try.

When I removed the connector, that I had used, for the Conrail conversion with the gondola battery car, using the 3S 10440 battery pack and then reconfigured the locomotive in the App, it appears that the voltage went up, as during the reconfiguration, the Step 7 speed went up from the original 65 mph to 72 mph, compared to when the connector was in the circuit.

At this point, I am encouraged to note that the 6th video in the series is getting a bit of traction on YouTube, but I am disappointed that there have been no other Dead Rail videos posted recently on YouTube. There just has to be others “out there” doing Dead Rail with LocoFi and the other available systems.

At the moment I am looking into how battery protection circuits (BPC) or battery management systems (BMS) can affect the depth of discharge (DoD) of Lithium based cells. Once the cell “knees” over, there is not a lot of useful capacity left in the cell, and draining the cell well below the “knee” puts it into a deep discharge situation. Adding a DC to DC converter, either up or down, along with a BPC or BMS exacerbates the situation as it disguises how far down the cell or battery is actually being drawn.

The effect of a high DoD on lead acid batteries is well known and understood, but there are varied opinions on the effects of high depths of discharge on Lithium based batteries. Most “experts” agree that high depths of discharge, on Lithium based batteries, do cause serious capacity loss.

There is always so much more to learn and I am very surprised that more research has not been done in this area of model railroading.

Although a novel approach to feed power to the tracks from the battery car, the locomotive is now essentially "track powered" and "NOT deadrail" anymore. We could as well not use a battery car at all and simply "power the tracks" from a high amp "always on" regulated DC supply. Ironically, we have a similar video on our website titled LocoFi™ - Demo Run on 9V Battery that simply demonstrates that we can also use a battery to power the locomotive but essentially the battery is feeding the tracks (no battery car though).

Yes, you could feed power to the track/rails and pick-up the power from the rails in theory but why? See no advantages only disadvantages, power losses, more and larger capacity batteries, longer consist, problems in turnouts, etc. The goal is to create a DEADRAIL circuit for consisting locomotives that is simple. Larger gauge wires above 20 or 22 AWG is not going to make any noticeable difference. Quality of wire, solder connections and connectors are the important issues. Remember KISS !!!

Yes, you could feed power to the track/rails and pick-up the power from the rails in theory but why? See no advantages only disadvantages, power losses, more and larger capacity batteries, longer consist, problems in turnouts, etc. The goal is to create a DEADRAIL circuit for consisting locomotives that is simple. Larger gauge wires above 20 or 22 AWG is not going to make any noticeable difference. Quality of wire, solder connections and connectors are the important issues. Remember KISS !!!

To help with the voltage drop , you could run larger wire like #16 inside the battery car and locos. Then only a few inches of small wire would be required for the external connections. This would help with the voltage drop.

Would tit be possible to wire the battery car to pickups on the wheels and use it to supply power to the tracks ? The locos could have pickups on them to get the power from the trailing battery car. You could also have more than 1 battery car. This may be a problem if your layout has reversing loops.

Thank you John, you've been so helpful with your tips. I'd already thought about mounting one end of the connector, and how I might try to disguise the mounted connector. Nice to know that I'm not the only old shaky guy that can't see. ;-)

Try Mouser Electronics Inc. Mansfield, TX www.mouser.com They have a good selection and easy to deal with if you require tech help. I world go with gold connectors.

I drew up a simple consist parallel wiring diagram that I am forwarding to LocoFi for comment. If all goes well I want them to forward it to you.

Get a stand that has 2 allegator clips and a magnifier. I had the same problem but with one of these it makes soldering a lot easier plus I get better connections. Like having 4 hands plus you can see what your doing. Use thin gauge solder and a fine point tip on your soldering iron. Don't forget to use flux when you solder and don't overheat the wires and connectors. Try sliding a piece of heat shrink over your first solder joint on a small connector so it acts as a heat shield, then solder the next connection. Heat shrink shrinks and insulates your first connection at the same time you make the second connection. Don't hurry, let the solder joint cool before starting next connection.

Try to mount one side of the connector, making it stationary. Makes it a lot easier to connect and disconnect a connector, big or small, with fat or skinny fingers.

You have to keep thinking simple. How can I do or make it easier !!!! Us old guys who can't see and shake still play with trains!!!!

John, I understand exactly what you are saying about full scale locomotive consists and when they might be used. I’d previously found a rail fan video on YouTube showing a couple of CSX GP15-1s pulling maybe a half dozen cars for some purpose. The video did not appear to be taken on a grade, and the purpose of the train was not really explained. Unfortunately, I can’t find that video again, but there are indeed a lot of full scale locomotive consists pulling only a few cars of rolling stock for many purposes. I only mentioned that the tip of the ice berg number of small to moderate size HO layouts presented on YouTube tend to use a single loco. I’m trying to really entice those not firmly entrenched in the hobby to give Dead Rail a try in the most simplified way.

Your idea of running the appropriate size wire through the locomotives and tapping off it is excellent. Do you know where to purchase low resistance, really small connectors?

The problem I have with small connectors is both soldering to them without bridging the gap (I shake and have horrible vision) and connecting/disconnecting them and I don’t really have fat fingers. ;-)

Thanks so much for the tip on using diagrams. That was very helpful. Also thanks for the encouragement. I am going to keep trying until I can really “nail” the KISS setup for Dead Rail for most people.

Your description of the setup on your locomotive for charging and selecting the power source was very impressive and what I would call an advanced skill for sure. Nice. :-)

I recharged the lithium battery on my locomotive via a pin plug/receptacle mounted on the locomotive's shell that allowed me to charge the battery with ease. To protect the LocoFi circuit I installed a magnetic reed switch which isolated the battery while it was being charged. The locomotive was wired to run on battery or track power. I installed a two position switch on the under side of the chassis to select the power source.

You simply unplug the first locomotive from the second locomotive with 2 pin plug/receptacle and from the battery car plug/receptacle wiring. Same way real locomotives connect communications from one locomotive to another with cables that have plugs and receptacles on locomotives .

Battery car connects to first locomotive. Power enters first locomotive wiring and LocoFi taps into that power source. If you consist locomotives you plug first locomotive into second locomotive. Second locomotive taps into power source running from battery car through first locomotive's power thru wires and on to second locomotive power thru wires running the length of it LocoFi system taps into power source of that locomotive. Using this concept you could exchange first loco with second loco and vice versa or just run one loco and battery car by simply pluging and unplugging the battery car and locomotive(s).. If you have enough power you may be able to consist a third or fourth locomotive by simply plugging and unplugging wires.

I watch real Norfolk Southern locomotives, from my home, consisted together 2 - 3 days a week delivering laminated wood beams to a distribution warehouse across a field from us.. Entry is up a steep grade and both diesels are at full throttle making the grade at slow speed with 6 -8 loaded cars to the warehouse. Consisted locomotives are needed in reallife in small local operations not just on long haul trains or on large model railroad layouts.

My idea of wiring your locomotives would be to install 20 or 22 multi strand solid copper wires, + and -, running the entire length of each locomotive with high quality plugs on each end of the wires and on the battery car's feed wires. Tap off the thru wires in each locomotive to power your LocoFi system/locomotive motor. Again having sufficient battery power coming from you battery car is paramount. Plug the locomotives and single battery car together and use you cellphone to control the consist. Keep the circuit KISS.

I was a service engineer traveling the world doing trouble shooting on heavy equipment for many years before i retired 26 years ago and the majority of my resoulutions to a problem were using KISS for complicated issues. Nothing much has changed since then when resolving problems on a model railroad.

Try using graphic diagrams rather than words and it will simplify your thoughts and aid you to visualize what you want to accomplish and then write about it. A picture is worth a 1,000 words. If your illustration can't support what you want to accomplish your written words will not. Good luck and keep trying !!!!

Please note that these first comments were written before viewing the forum this morning, June 2, 2022. I had read the “Interesting! We would love to hear more about it.” comment yesterday.

As a technical writer and editor for almost 4 decades, I tend to write things out and mull over them before posting to any venue. I also have a tendency to be quite verbose, but I try to format an intelligent response based on facts and not opinion or what I “think” in that moment in time.

Unfortunately, I did not do that yesterday.

It has been an interesting 24 hours of “thinking” about consisting locomotives with a dedicated battery car.

After sleeping on it, I realized that the methods that I was originally considering would not really work. What I was originally thinking was to either use series or parallel wiring from the battery pack to the motors, but that only applied to the motors originally, while not considering the two independent decoders/LocoFi modules to control the motors, lights and sounds of both locos.

I had arrived at that first erroneous way of thinking because it was quite common, in the very early days of radio controlled electric flight, to use parallel or series wiring to two identical brushed DC motors to be controlled either with a switch or some primitive speed controller. That’s not really applicable here, but that line of thinking threw me off for a bit.

For multi-motor planes and drones today, we use brushless motors and each motor requires their own electronic speed controller (ESC) fed from one battery pack via a “Y”-type harness for airplane twins while multi-rotors use their own controller, which may or may not contain the ESCs, to power and control each motor (simplified version). This type of system is a bit more germane to what we are trying to do, but way too complicated, especially for when there is more than one locomotive in the consist and only one battery car, as wiring would become quite cumbersome.

I now think that I should have included my first “gut” reaction, in video 6, that a Con to Dead Rail, when using a dedicated battery car, is that consisting is either extremely complicated or not really a viable option.

Like LocoFi itself, in its simplified way to do remote control of the motor with sound and lights, I’ve tried to make converting to Dead Rail as simple as possible for the end user following the KISS process. Removing cylindrical IMR Lithium-ion cells and charging them in a dedicated, no user input, charger was part of that process. Placing the batteries/cells in battery boxes in a gondola, with an easily removable load, or boxcar, with an easily removable shell, was part of the KISS process.

At this point, I really, really wish that I had noted that the ability to consist locomotives is limited to non-existent when using a trailing battery car with diesel locomotives.

When LocoFi releases its steam version, then consisting steam locomotives could be easier, as the trailing car could be the tender.

* * * * *

This was written after reading the comments in this thread this morning, 06/02/2022.

I agree with John 100%. Small gauge wire and connector losses could be considerable. The tiny connectors, required between locomotives, could contribute to a lot of voltage drop, as tiny connectors, in general, have quite high resistance as well as the small gauge wire.

I got rid of the small, but not tiny, connector that I originally used in my Conrail conversion with the gondola battery car. When I removed that connector and soldered the wires, I reconfigured that “new” combination in the LocoFi App. The Conrail’s top speed, in the 7 step speed configuration in the App, went up from 65 mph to 72 mph, so I didn’t use a connector when I converted the CSX with the boxcar battery car. My battery cars are now permanently fixed/soldered to their respective locomotives.

The first thing that I did this morning was go to YouTube and use the search term HO model railroad. I was looking to see when locomotive consists were typically used. After briefly looking at maybe the first 50 or so videos, that actually showed HO trains running, I concluded that the majority of consisted locomotives appeared on club size layouts and very large home layouts. That didn’t really surprise me. The vast majority of the videos, showing HO trains running, appeared to me, to be single locomotives with not a huge amount of rolling stock trailing behind them. Just an observation.

Consisting diesel locomotives with a single battery car does indeed get quite complicated, and is probably not worth the effort for most people. I feel that a vast majority of folks going Dead Rail with small to moderate size HO layouts probably won’t use or need it. Just my opinion.

From my vantage point I can't see why you can't consist locomotives using a trailing battery car without a problem provided you have sufficent battery power, correctly sized wiring to eliminate power drops to each locomotive from the battery.

I

Thanks again for your very kind comments.

In the first draft, for the video, I did have a comment about having a trailing battery car limiting the possibilities for consisting, which it does, as it makes it more complicated for sure, but I thought of ways to actually do it, so I dropped the comment.

Both ways of doing it, that I thought of, would cut the run time in half, but I'm getting ready to check the feasibility of using a 3S IMR Lithium-ion 650mAh battery pack. If that proves out, then cutting the run time in half wouldn't really matter, as it would still give the consisted locos, that I've been using, at least 30 minutes.

To me it seems that real world consisting is used mostly for "over the road" long distance hauling, but not always. That might be important for large home layouts or club layouts, small to moderate HO size layouts, in my opinion, would not have the need to run multiple locomotives in a consist, except for demonstrating to visitors that he/she has some long haul capability in their livery. Also, a consisted loco takes up space that could be used for another piece of rolling stock that could be delivered or retrieved without making the train seem a bit too long for the available space.

Thanks,

Ken

Yet another informative video. Thorough and detailed as usual! Great job on the detailed specs and measurements. Finally a recap with pros and cons of the deadrail system in an unbiased manner. Nicely summarized and we couldn't agree more.

One comment: Should we also add that having a trailing battery car limit the possibility of consisting?

Thanks again for the kind words for LocoFi™.

Great tips and useful information John. Thank you so much.

As you may have noticed, I'm only doing "short" range in my basement.

Your firsthand knowledge provides us with some very good information to be aware of.

Thanks,

Ken

I noticed you mention that a router is not required. YES but NO Back in 2020 when i did my Deadrail install in an O scale, 2 rail, diesel locomotive I ran into a problem with the locomotive going out of range of the tablet and cell phone and had to install a router, centrally located, on our club's model railroad layout. This was prior to the updates of the LocoFi system. The locomotive would go into a "run away" and go out of control when the signal was lost. This prompted LocoFi to have a failsafe feature added to the syatem when the signal was lost to prevent an accident from happening. Anyone who has not updated there LocoFi system is urged to do so to prevent an unlikely issue if the signal is lost and to consider adding a router if required.