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Made me appreciate RailPro even more

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G8B4Life:
I came across this link on one of the blog's I check into from time to time: https://youtu.be/VinRRW0cGdc. It a video of the BNSF Fall River division layout. While the layout is very large and very well done, what got me and the point of this post is the scene with the owner installing batteries into about 20 radio throttles.

That just made me appreciate RailPro even more that the battery charging circuitry is built in. If I ever had a layout that needed that many controllers it'd be a simple matter to build a large capacity charger. 1 x 5v 30A SMPS power supply and some suitable modified cables.

Now, if only we could use them while charging life would be really great!

- Tim

Alan:
I think removing the batteries is the only way to turn off a Digitrax throttle. No on/off switch.

nodcc4me:
That's right Alan. No switch. The guys at my club are always scrambling for charged batteries, even though we have a 10 bank charger. You have to wonder why Digitrax couldn't have added a small switch somewhere on the controller?  :o

G8B4Life:
To be fair, removing the batteries is the only way to completely 100% turn off a HC, seeing as all pushing off seems to do is put the HC into suspend/standby instead of actually off and not using any power what-so-ever, but it is an effective system instead of a physical on/off switch.

It is these things that Ring built in that makes me appreciate the system more, no need to remove the batteries for storage between uses (I wonder what the battery life of idle DigiTrax radio throttle is?) and no need to remove the batteries to charge them. The only flaw in Rings design is if you have a flat controller at the start of a session it's not so easy to change the batteries for charged ones as it is with other systems.

- Tim

Alan:
I have found the powered down HC battery life to be very long. Easily in excess of 6 months. Since I am very much still in the layout construction phase I run trains very little. Often the HC can sit unused for months at a time with the charge indicator showing it still has plenty of charge. I charge every once in a while just because it seems like the right thing to do.

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