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Battery Car

On the left is a HLW Value Gondola. You say, "That's a pretty strange battery car!" But Cook Jellico Coal Co No 1 was a mining engine. Most likely, it pulled either short gondolas or ore cars similar to these. If a tender was needed, it wouldn't be surprising to see that the railroad had taken one of the ends off an ore car car as I have done on the right.

In a recent thread at MyLargeScale.com, Stan Cedarleaf talked about the power in a small Lithium Ion battery pack used to power the Canon EOS Rebel Digital Camera. My wife Janet happened to find the same battery pack under the tree for Christmas, so I am familiar with the battery pack Stan discussed in the thread.

Stan pointed me to a supplier, SterlingTec who sells both the Canon charger for $19.99 and a 1300 mah 7.2 volt battery pack for $11.99. These battery packs are quite small, 2 1/8 x 1 1/2 x 3/4 inch. Here's a photo of the charger. Sterling also sells adaptors for a different charger that adapts it to take the batteries. For this project aimed at testing Li-On battery packs for railroad use, I ordered a Canon charger, two 5100 battery packs and two adapters. I paid $3 apiece for the adaptors.

	This is a photo of the Canon charger. Note that the plug is removable making it possible to mount the battery and charger inside a battery car or tender and plug in the cord to charge the battery pack.
	This is a third party charger. You can see the adaptor between the battery and the charger. The adapter, with leads soldered to its pickup terminals, will be mounted inside the gondola to hold the battery and allow it to be changed out quickly.

Bashing the Tender

My plan is to install two battery packs in the tender. A shelf will carry a real wood load and cover the battery packs ands adapters.

The Hartland Value Tender's side walls snap in and out of its deck. So the sides, shelf, and wood load could be removed quickly to swap out battery packs.

This photo shows the tender with the sides removed. Fingers at the bottom of the side beams snap into the holes that are visible from the deck.

Two battery packs will be mounted to the deck. Wired in series, the packs would produce 14.4 volts of 1300 mAh power. Wired in parallel, the packs would produce 7.2 volts of 2600 mAh power. Plans are to use a DTDT switch to toggle between parallel and serial, giving the engine two speeds without radio control. A pot will be used to adjust the actual speed at both speed ranges. Should I want to add radio control later, rewiring would be simple.

More height was needed to provide plenty of room for electronics. So wood hungry boards were added on top of the tender sides. Then a cover was fabricated from sheet styrene and styrene beams.

	In this view, the top portion of the tender is in place including the cover for the electronics area. All gaps and cracks have been sealed with epoxy. The tender top awaits application of bolts to the wood hungry boards and a coat of flat black paint. Once the paint is in place, the wood load will be glued on top of the cover.
	In this view, the entire top has been removed. The tender top is laying on its top. Removal of the tender top leaves the entire deck available to service the electronics.

I decided to shorten the tender's wheelbase as a result of suggestions at Stan Cedarleaf's Kitbashin and Kitbashin 2 pages at his Web site. In fact, I credit Stan for the inspiration behind the battery solution to powering the Glover engine. There's not a great deal of space in this engine for batteries and electronics. The tender solves the problem nicely.

	This photo shows the shortened wheelbase on the tender. This was accomplished by cutting the snap in side beams then gluing them to the cast beams on the under side of the tender. Wood beams were added to both sides to offer more prototypical support.
	Note the track nails pretending to be bolts holding the hungry boards together. The plastic wheels will be replaced by metal wheels from San-Val that should arrive in three or four days.
	This photo shows the tender after the application of Krylon flat black paint. Note that I added a shelf covering the front of the tender's deck. This shelf is attached to the top portion and will carry the front portion of the wood load allowing the entire wood load to be removed with the tender top.
Photo to come ...	This photo shows the tender top after installation of the wood load. The wood load covers the front of the tender deck and the shelf hiding the electronics.

Electronics

Initially I plan to run this engine without radio control. I'd like to have the option of running the two 7.2 volt batteries in either series or parallel.

	14.4 Volts at 1300 mAh in Series
	7.2 Volts at 2600 mAh in parallel

I also want to be able to turn off and reverse the engine with switches. As the following diagram shows, this can be accomplished with two DPDT switches, one of the two with center off. I'll mount the serial/parallel switch with the handle pointing down through the bottom of the tender. The reversing switch will be mounted in the engine.

Red lines are positive. Yellow lines are negative. Blue lines either connect positive to negative or could be either positive or negative.

Battery Car

Bashing the Tender

Electronics

(c) 2007 Iron Horse 1:29