By Jon C.A. DeKeles

Author  Bio More and more engines and locos are battery ready right out of the box. Many have a built-in Track/Battery switch and a modular plug where you can just attach a trailing car loaded with batteries, a remote control and be off and running.

A recent article by Paul Norton got a lot of people asking questions about battery power for their railroad. (LSOL Members can read that article here.)

We thought we would help answer some of the questions about the Aristo-Craft battery offerings by trying it ourselves. More and more engines and locos are battery ready right out of the box. Many have a built-in Track/Battery switch and a modular plug where you can just attach a trailing car loaded with batteries, a remote control receiver and be off and running.

Read on to learn all about the simple Aristo-Craft solution for battery power. In future articles we will look at other battery options, as well as how to upgrade your non-battery ready engines and locos.

The Batteries (CRE55493)
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They each have a positive and negative terminal at the top that are clearly marked red and black. (If you don't know by now, red is positive.) They have a flat push connector on each end that works with the optional wiring kit we will talk about later in the article.

Each battery is rated at 6 volts and 3 amps. Putting three of these together will give you 18 volts and the power you need to run your train. We were finding run times of 2 to 3 hours depending on the type of engine we ran.Run time also depended on if we had lights, sound and the smoke turned on. The more features used, the more power used, the less the time running the train.

The Charger (CRE55595)
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The charger can take input from 12 to 24 volts and can independently charge three 6 volt batteries at the same time. It has a built in cooling fan and you are protected with a reverse hookup protection. There is a light for each battery to indicate the charging condition too. There is an over current fuse protection and the unit has automatic cut off when charging is complete. We found the unit easy to understand, set-up and use. The unit is 6.25" x 3.25" x 3.5"

Low Voltage Cut Off (CRE55601)
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It is important not to drain gel batteries to zero. Once a gel battery is completely drained it will not recharge. The Automatic Cut Off For Gel Batteries continually monitors the batteries and will shut the system down before the drain causes damage. This is a must have if you are running Aristo-Craft batteries. The unit has two strips of double sided tape on the back in order to attach it where necessary.

There are two pairs of wires connected to the unit. The two wires with the push terminals on the ends are connected to the batteries, and the other wires are connected to power the engine. You will of course be using some type of radio receiver to control the train and most likely these wires will go to that device and not directly to the engine. This unit is about 3.0" x 1.75" x 1.0"

The Wires (CRE55602)
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Don't forget to order the wire pack. This will make your life all so much easier. These wires are specifically designed to be used with these batteries and the charger. Included are the wires you need to charge the batteries and the wires you will need to attach the batteries together to use them to power your train.

There are 3 black wires with alligator clips on one end and a bare soldered wire at the other. There is also a wire set which is 3 red wires terminated together on one end and individual alligator clips on the other. These are used to attached the charger to the batteries.

There are two other short power wires. Each has a red and a black end. At the ends are the flat push on connectors. These will be used to attach the batteries in series when you run your train. (More later.)

NEVER have the batteries connected together with the short power wires when you try to charge the batteries. You can damage the charger as well as the batteries themselves. Always remove your batteries from any devices before you attach the charging wires.

Train Wires (ART29511 / ART29607)
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The last piece of the puzzle is to make sure you have the connectors to connect your batteries to your locos. Most of the new Aristo-Craft engines have a modular connector at the rear of the train. This is where you will be plugging in your batteries. There are two wire sets that will help you make this job easier.

The ART29511 is a set of male and female connectors with pig tails. You can use them to get the power from the batteries to the loco.

The ART29607 is a male to male connector. You would used this to attach two trains together to power them both. A good example would be if you were running an FA-B combination. You would use this cable to plug the A engine to the B engine. Your batteries would plug into the B unit. This way both engines could run off of the same batteries.

Setting up to charge your system.
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Put it all together and it spells power! Setting up the parts to charge the batteries is simple. Make sure the power supply is not plugged in and the power switch is off. Why both? Because you will really know that it is off and not supplying power to the charger.

The back of the charger has 4 terminals, 1 red and 3 black. The red terminal is the positive common. The 3 black terminals are the negatives. I am sure you remember that the batteries have also been marked with a red(positive(+)) and a black(negative(-)) terminals.

Insert the bare single end of the wire with three leads into the red(+) terminal on the charger. Clip each of the three alligator clips to the red(+) terminals on each of the three batteries as per the picture.

Insert the bare ends of the single wires into the 3 black(-) terminals on the charger. Clip the alligator clips to the black(-) terminals on each of the 3 batteries.

There is a connector to attach the charger to the power supply. If you are using an Aristo-Craft power supply it is just plug and play. If you are using any other power supply you must make sure you are properly connecting the power to the charger. Make sure the polarity is correct. Positive to the positive and negative to the negative.

Plug the power supply into the wall socket and set the power switch to the on position. The 3 lights on the face of the charger will slowly blink while the batteries are charging. They will go out once the batteries are fully charged. The first time we charged the batteries it took about 3 hours for them to charge.

Setting up to run your train.
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• First, unplug the power supply from the wall. Always make sure there is no power going to the charger before you connect or disconnect your batteries.

• Second, disconnect all the alligator clips from each of the batteries.

• Third make sure the three batteries are side-by-side so that the red terminals are on one side and the black terminals are to the other. Attach the first power wire's red push connector to the middle position battery's red terminal. Then attach that power wire's black connector to the black terminal of the battery in the top position. Never connect the red and the black terminal of the same battery together! Next, attach the second power wire's red push connector to the bottom position battery's red terminal. Then attach that power wire's black connector to the black terminal on the battery in the middle position.

• Last, you will connect the Cut-Off to the batteries. Make sure that the bare wires on the end of the Cut-Off are not touching. When you hook this up there will be power running through the Cut-Off. If the wires on the end are touching you can damage the Cut-Off as well as the batteries. Attach the power leads of the Cut-Off to a Train Engineer on-board receiver or other such RC control device. Then attach the red connector on the Cut-Off to the red terminal on the battery in the top position. Attach the black connector on the Cut-Off to the black terminal on the battery in the bottom position.

At this point you have a working circuit providing 18 volts of power to run your trains. If you want to control the speed of the train you will need to run this through a remote control device.

We connected up the whole thing and just dropped it in a hopper car. We used a TE like Paul suggested and were up and runnning our SD-45 in about 5 minutes after the batteries were charged.

We will show you more about our adventure in battery power later, or if you are a member of LSOL you can read Paul Norton's article on using a Aristo-Craft TE available now.

Also, look for additional articles on products you can use to control your battery power trains right here at LSOL.com.

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