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It all began with the rats. For you see, I live in a co-op, which is a large house shared by lots (in this case, 60) people. Things aren't quite the cleanest, and the rats had gotten into our pantry. One of my housemates was wondering out loud, perhaps, if we ran a train set in the pantry at night it would scare the rats away.
I recalled I had an old HO train set stored away, and I thought, well, even if we can't scare off the rats, it'd still be fun to run some trains around the house. Unfortunately, the train set being a relic from the 80's or so, even after giving the track a good scrubbin, the engine was still coming to a halt every few inches it ran over a spot of bad track. Now one might think, this is where one gets some track cleaning fluid... but me being sort of a hippie, I wasn't going to use anything stronger than vinegar on my railroad, and if that didn't work, it'd be time to get a little creative!
It didn't take too long for it to turn into a little renewable energy project, after all, this might be a fun way to learn a few technical skills in this emerging industry. I bought a few solar mini solar panels, wired them up in series, and presto, the solar powered railway. Never need to clean track again!
A few of the details:
The engine is an AHM diesel. The motor runs on 300 milliamps and a minimum of 4 volts.
The solar panels are each 1 volt, 400 milliamps. 4 of them are enough to get the wheels turning, 6 will get the engine up slight grades. All said and done, they perform nicely in the sun (who would have thought one could get a tan while working on one's model railroad?) but have this unfortunate tendency to bring service to a halt whenever the line passes beneath a shadow. I'll have to add a second array in parallel to the first to deal with that.
more to come...
I recalled I had an old HO train set stored away, and I thought, well, even if we can't scare off the rats, it'd still be fun to run some trains around the house. Unfortunately, the train set being a relic from the 80's or so, even after giving the track a good scrubbin, the engine was still coming to a halt every few inches it ran over a spot of bad track. Now one might think, this is where one gets some track cleaning fluid... but me being sort of a hippie, I wasn't going to use anything stronger than vinegar on my railroad, and if that didn't work, it'd be time to get a little creative!
It didn't take too long for it to turn into a little renewable energy project, after all, this might be a fun way to learn a few technical skills in this emerging industry. I bought a few solar mini solar panels, wired them up in series, and presto, the solar powered railway. Never need to clean track again!
A few of the details:
The engine is an AHM diesel. The motor runs on 300 milliamps and a minimum of 4 volts.
The solar panels are each 1 volt, 400 milliamps. 4 of them are enough to get the wheels turning, 6 will get the engine up slight grades. All said and done, they perform nicely in the sun (who would have thought one could get a tan while working on one's model railroad?) but have this unfortunate tendency to bring service to a halt whenever the line passes beneath a shadow. I'll have to add a second array in parallel to the first to deal with that.
more to come...