Remote Control, battery and sound

Here's a shot of a 14.8v Li-Ion battery pack I got from BatterySpace.com - complete with protection from overcurrent surges and overtemperature faults as well as a protection circuit module (PCB) - that I installed in in a Bachmann Climax. As you can see it fits nicely inside the firebox/backhead area, but I did have to remove the weight and cut out some of the internal structure. Also had to do some trimming inside the backhead casting. The pack is about $45 and is ideal for those of you (like me) that might be a little leery of building your own using lithium-ion cells.


The AirWire receiver/decoder card and Phoenix P5 sound board are yet to be installed in this picture.


Here's how I mounted the P5 sound card (from Phoenix) and the RC/decoder card (from AirWire) in the Climax, the P5 card was mounted on top of the speaker magnet using double-sided foam tape and wired. (Connections are made with kit-supplied plugs rather than with screw terminals to save space.) The speaker was "baffled" with a styrene sheet cut to fit over the openings in the speaker frame and sealed with silicon.


The 2.5" speaker was installed on the deck first, along with a fuse holder and an on/off DPST switch and the volume control switch from the P5 kit. Since there's more vertical than horizontal space available inside the tender shell, I built a frame to mount a programing jack above them.
The receiver/decoder card was then cut in half and reconnected using a special kit for that purpose (also from AirWire - about $14) which entails soldering a plug on each piece and inserting a wire tape between them. The antenna half was stacked on top and the whole assembly was mounted on the P5 card. A few bits of styrene strip were used for stability. The two wire connectors are for the recharging jack (inside the water fill hatch) and the backup light, both mounted on the tender shell.


The unit is powered, of course, by the 14.8vdc Li-Ion battery pack mounted in the firebox/backhead area.


It's a snug fit, but I got everything inside the tender shell. The wires will be concealed with "spilled" fuel (logs) and the top opening was left open with a wire mesh to support more logs. This should provide plenty of ventilation.


BTW, for those of you who were interested in the amount of run time I get from the lithium-ion battery pack (14.8 VAC, 2400 mAh) - I ran it all afternoon, pulling a seven-car train up a pretty steep grade as well as around the whole layout three or four times,