Roundhouse battery loco, pre-purchase questionnaire

Mobi said:
Some one in the forum who lives not far from me have offered me help :D

So now I need a loco and some courage

(and some good excuse to explain it to my wife why I am "wasting money" in railways again - especially when I shall be "destroying" a loco bought with my hard earned cash :) )

PS: I have now ordered LGB Ko diesel 0-6-0 from Ebay. This would be my guinea pig loco for RC conversion.
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Were you hoping to fit Batteries in this Loco? I have one and there is not a lot of space in them for the Batteries. If you are going to make a set up with your Batteries in say a Van then that will work with the Rear Socket rewired to be the Battery Supply. However what that means is that your Loco will always be trailing the Battery Van when running. Ok if you are just corcumnavigating a Circle of Track, but not if you wish to run the Train the other way as now you will be propelling the Van.
JonD
 
Mobi said:
What this connector cable is called? If I buy from Ebay, what do I search for? :-\
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I believe they are call Molex connectors.

However, I do not know the size or type of the LGB one.

You may need to ask someone at your local Maplins....
 
Ok if you are just corcumnavigating a Circle of Track
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That is what I run ;)

If battery needs to be in a trailing van, as my first DIY conversion, I won't be too unhappy.

If I manage to send battery power via rear connector, then it can be best of both worlds may be?

You run the loco as track powered when needed and also as battery power?
 
Mobi said:
4. What sort of connection/plug/wires I need to get to feed power via rear socket? Is it LGB proprietary format?
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PM me your address and I'll pop one in the post for you. I have some spare in my bits box.

I'm not sure these are available from Maplin, you can get them from here: https://www.champex-linden.de/
 
Four pin Plug on motor block, two to motor, Two pins to pickups. If you are connecting to battery you need to pull motor block apart and remove pickup bits. There will be enough room under bonnet for a battery if you use a Lipo 3 cell 1100mh or bigger 3c. depending what sort of RC you are using. I use Crest Revolution, gives you sound, speed control, headlights, plus three other functions e.g. cab lights, uncoupler,etc, I am trying the HO/OO unit they have just released nice and small and able to handle up two 2 amps draw for motor. The Revolution stuff works out as very good value for money for the things it can do, and the ease to install and set up.
 
OK, the 0-6-0 Ko diesel loco has arrived and here is what I have observed.

1. The loco bottom has a marking (c) 1988, Made in Western Germany.

Does it mean my loco was made in 1988?? I was not expecting it to be that old :o. Although it is used but very clean and seller said only used indoor.

2. Opening up the cover of rear socket was bit fiddly.

The 2 pins were having just 1-2 mm gap between them. So testing with probe was very difficult. Anyway, I managed to test with battery power (6xAA) and wheels do rotate. :D

3. The loco also runs fine in my analog track.
 
Mobi said:
OK, the 0-6-0 Ko diesel loco has arrived and here is what I have observed.

1. The loco bottom has a marking (c) 1988, Made in Western Germany.

Does it mean my loco was made in 1988?? I was not expecting it to be that old :o. Although it is used but very clean and seller said only used indoor.

.........
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Don't worry, it's not that old! The 1988, if actually embossed into the plastic, will refer to the date that that particular design of part (the gearbox bottom plate) was first used by LGB!

To date your actual loco, does it have a little round GOLD sticker, about a centimetre across? If so, the look at the six-digit number on this sticker - the FIRST and LAST digits indicate the year of manufacture (as the last two digits of the year), eg; if the number was 0xxxx5, that would be a loco made in 2005. A sticker with 9xxxx8 would have been made in 1998.

Jon.
 
I am struggling to draw a circuit diagram for the motor. :(

Why it needs 4 connections? Only 2 should be enough to feed power to the motor.
 
Mobi said:
I am struggling to draw a circuit diagram for the motor. :(

Why it needs 4 connections? Only 2 should be enough to feed power to the motor.
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See my post above (reply no.95)..... ;)

Jon.
 
Yes, still not clear unfortunately.

Here is my understanding of circuit diagram.

http://imgur.com/xTznVCN

Where exactly I am wrong here?
 
The four connections are into the motor-block.. The OUTER two are connected to the motor. The INNER two are connected to the track pickups.

If you were to connect the battery pack you made up to the outer pins, the motor would run. - Does that help?
 
Sorry, postings crossed..

Track pickup and rear socket are in parallel.. This also feeds into the decoder. The decoder then feeds out to the motor.

The power goes through the decoder even when running analogue.
 
_____________________ ____________
_I I I
I
track skt into decoder out of decoder motor

_ I
I__________I__________ _____________I

So no direct connection from track to motor in a DCC fitted loco.
(sorry about the ascii art)
 
OK, so "motor block" means decoder?

As per your diagram, there are 4 wires (2 in 2 out) for "decoder" and 2 wires for "motor".

If it is a pure analog loco, will there be just 2 wires to "motor block" instead of 4?
 
Not quite..
The motor block has the wheels, pickup, motion, and motor on/in it.
The skates, and pickups from the back of the wheels, are connected together (on each side) internally, and brought out to the two inner pins.
The outer pins only connect to the motor. - The block houses the motor..

There is sometimes a switch to allow the lights to be on, but no power to the motor, but basically track would connect to motor for analogue, if there was not a decoder in the loco.
 
I found following circuit diagram. Although this is for 2 motor loco I guess for single loco it would be similar.

http://www.wiringfordcc.com/lgb_unitah.gif

Now I understand what is a "motor block".

Now, how the rear socket is connected? Can I just assume "rear socket" is same as any of the "lights" in above diagram?

Last night when I fed battery via rear socket, the loco wheels were in the air.

If the wheels are on brass track (not powered, of course) and battery power is fed by rear socket, the decoder will send power to motor via socket as well as picking up power via tracks (I mean same battery power will go to motor via rear socket as well via tracks)?

This decoder bit is far more complicated than I thought it would be.
 
In your diagram, the rear socket would also be fed from the 'LGB electronics'. - Though it would be directly connected to the brown and white wires.

For battery use you MUST NOT also have a connection from your system to the wheels/pickups. It would not matter on a 'dead' (not powered) track, but if the track had either analogue or DCC power on it, the two systems would 'fight' each other, and one or other would be damaged.

You could fit a DPDT (preferably centre off) switch to allow either track or battery power, but we are adding complication for a first attempt.

Regarding lights.. You will probably want to replace them with LED's.. These take a lot less power, so you can run for longer on battery. The existing bulbs will probably have flat ends, so are 5V. Depending on what maximum voltage you are going to feed to the motor, will decide if you can just connect them to the output of your speed controller, or need to do something else.
 
I think we're in danger here of getting confused with terminology, possibly because we assume a certain level of basic knowledge which complete newcomers may not possess.... when someone on here refers to a "motor block" or a "gearbox", especially in relation to LGB items, what they mean is the black (or possibly red in your loco?) "brick" mounted in the loco chassis that contains the motor, the gears and the axles, and also houses the track power pickups in the form of the skates and the wheel-back pickup plungers. The basic motor block has been the standard power unit of most LGB locos since the very first ones in the late 1960s, and although it has been through a few design changes (you may hear people talk of "Clamshell" (or "Split") and "Sandwich" blocks, which are just different designs of the basic block over the years) the fundamental principle is the same - it is a rectangular plastic housing fitted with either 4 or 6 wheels, and basically contains all the "working parts" of the loco in one handy, reasonably weatherproof casing. With a modern "D" type motor block designed for DCC operation, there are four terminal pins labelled as per my earlier post. The OUTER pins, as Phil explained, go to the MOTOR; the INNER pins go to the track power pickups.

Jon.
 
bf713077959d756533e883dc31d8f4a4.jpg


My latest attempt to draw the circuit diagram. Wheels pickup current which goes to decoder. Decoder sends power back to motor block which feed to motor.
 
You got it.. ;)

You need to disconnect the brown and white wires to avoid track volts getting into your battery wiring. - If you leave these 'floating' in the loco, PLEASE insulate them! :o ;) ;)
 
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