Garden Railway Forum

Here is my converted LGB Henschel locomotive. She has had her track skates removed, wheel carbon brushes removed, a 4 AA battery pack put under the bonnet and a DPDT toggle switch on the rear cab wall installed. Using 4 1.2vt nicad batteries, the speed is spot on with the train pictured on my overhead layout. That consist should also work outdoors on the garden line as well. I have not had the chance to see what actual battery run time is yet. She didnt have a headlight at first, so I dug this headlight bucket out of my junk bin, then modified it to look like the arc headlights used on the Darjeeling Railway. Using a golden white LED, its power leads form half the center branch guard bars with excentsions soldered on to form the upper half. I then used extra metal from some old resistors to make the rest of the branch guard bars, then painted it all black. I added a resistor to the power leads and connected them to the motor power hookups. Lights up in the forward direction only. And being an LED, it should add to much to the draw on the battery. Havent figured out a name for her yet. I also swapped out the small LGB engineer for a larger figure I had on hand. Cheers Mike

Very nice mod; interesting that it runs well on such a low (relatively!) voltage. Name of new driver Fidel Castro by any chance?

The driver does kind of resemble that dictator doesnt he. Most of the power needed to run the engine under track power comes from the heavy lead weight that LGB put under the hood, the track skates and carbon sprung loaded brushes put considerable load on the motor without even pulling a load. The drive just consists of a small unmarked can motor at the very rear of the chassis, driving the rear axle through a worm and worm gear, the front axle is driven with a 1/8 inch rubber toothed belt like might be found in a computer printer. I ran the model for 2 hours, about an hour each run time and still havent had any loss of speed from low batteries yet. A greater battery voltage fed thru a critter controler would be better, but there is a lack of space under the bonnet for any more cells. I run out of power climbing hills before I run out of traction. So more power would be nice. Need a higher voltage battery pack that isnt any larger than a 4 cell AA pack. Mike

Maybe a trailer car with batteries is in order, something enclosed such as a covered gondola, goods, brake van, tank, etc.

I dont want a trailer car, to me that defeats the purpose of a self contained locomotive. It does ok, handles the train pictured below ok up and down the hills using 4 Ni-Mah batteries, 1.2vt each. I havent tried it with the higher 1.5vt alkaline batteries yet. Mike

I've actually given up on rechargeables - there are such good deals to be had on normal batteries that I don't think it's worth the hassle, plus you get more volts from dry batteries!

we already had the batteries and chargers laying around the house. I wouldnt spend the $$ on them now, thats for sure! Mike