Batteries not Included

One of our local exhibitions takes the form of a joint event with the Model Bus Federation and attracts an interesting range of traders. One of my fellow NGRM Online members described them as some of the best rummage boxes around... At the most recent show my eye was drawn to what looked like a large tramcar controller, the sticker said it was Tomytec, needed batteries and better still was just a pound! I've experimented with battery control on the Christmas pizza and I thought it would make a novel controller for the O9 battery railcar on 'odsock Corner.

Opening up the back I was surprised to see it used 4x AA batteries, and a quick test confirmed that was more than enough as the railcar was at an acceptable speed just opening up the controller with top speeds more suited to HS2. A comment on the NGRM online forum confirmed what I thought from a quick look at the inner workings, that you could bypass two of the battery slots and it would work at half-power. The retained batteries are at the base of the unit for better weight distribution.

With a suitable DIN plug added to the wire it has proved successful, the layout currently residing on the lit shelf in the shed that was intended to be home to so much more layout...

Another battery related project is one that provision was made for earlier in the build, adding an LED light to the office building. I'm not a huge fan of overly-lit layouts and feel that light does not scale easily, so the intention here is not over-bright illumination to use in the dark, just enough to see what is inside when scene depicts day time. Before Christmas I found a trader on eBay selling pre-wired LED units and bought a single-LED unit to try.

The two wires pre-soldered to the single  LED were sprayed grey to disguise them within the building, they drop through the hole in the floor and under the board. At present they lead through a hole in the framing that I had to drill by hand, to a switched battery pack for 2x AAA batteries hidden under the baseboard. I found that a unit for 2x AA was just a little oversize to fit. If the 3v provided by these batteries proves not to be enough in the long term I can possibly fit a 9v battery in the space. 

Photographing a very dimly-lit light in daylight is rather tricky, so I resorted to turning the room lights out after all. In reality that street lamp would be lit as well, but the railway at 'odsock Corner probably sleeps at night!

Colin