If you were introduced to the hobby of model railroading through your father’s trains, you’ve seen things as they were. Trains sure have changed. The hobby also sure has changed. So have power and control systems, and Aristo-Craft continues to be at the forefront of that change.

We keep our eyes fixed on the horizon. We look to the future. We look for the mountain’s Crest. We take the long view.

That’s not always an easy position to hold in the Large Scale market. The clamor is for "new", for "more", for "my road name", for quick gratification of today’s needs. Customers know what they want. Manufacturers, to be successful well into this decade, have to put their talent to work, not just filling the immediate need, but anticipating the future need. It’s an interesting mix; following the Customer’s needs, and leading the hobby to improved, reliable, cost/value balanced products.

Here at Aristo-Craft, we’ve seen battery operation for our trains on the horizon for some time. We recognized it early as the key to growth for the Large Scale industry. You’ve told us that the difficulty of proper conductivity and track cleanliness in track power railways makes your operation of outdoor trains more labor intensive than many of you would like. We know that ease of use will bring more people into the hobby, and the track power/track cleaning issue is way up on the list of "Ease of Use" requirements. Meeting that need means battery power.

The path to making battery operation widely accessible in the marketplace has not been an easy one. New products, particularly involving electronics and power systems have inherently long lead times. It takes a significant amount of design, development and testing to get everything into place. Couple that process with the financial decisions and cost balancing necessary to fund and manufacture a multi-million dollar, full line product catalog, and you get a feel for the requirement to make long range decisions in the manner that we do.

When we make these decisions we don’t make them alone. We plan our product line with your input. We have had discussions with many end users. We built prototypes and demonstrated them at shows. We listened to what you told us during those demonstrations and based on those criteria, we’ve committed to a path that links easy to use battery power with our state of the art remote control system.

One of the early considerations was the selection of a proper battery to do the job. We knew that you wanted long run times and short re-charge times. You were clear in what you told us. You wanted to be able to have a spare pack of batteries on charge while the trains were running and to be able to quickly and easily swap in a fresh set when the batteries were dissipated. To meet your specs, we selected a 3 amp, 6 volt gel-cell battery that we’ll offer in a set of three. This provides what we feel is the proper current for motors at 18 volts. We’re confident about the quality, capacity and reliability of these battery packs, as we’ve sold thousands to the emergency light and alarm industry.

The second choice we had to make was that of a battery charger. It would have to meet our criteria of a fast and full charge, safety, reliability, and be a good match for both the gel cells and the environment in which you run and store your trains. As we searched the global marketplace, we found that we couldn’t find what we needed at reasonable cost, so we put our engineering team to work. We designed our own with our own software program in the chip to maximize the efficiency and speed of the charging. We also came to realize that it would be far easier (and more cost effective) to build a charger which utilizes our already U.L. listed power supplies in 3.5 and 10 Amps, than to incorporate a totally new power supply into the charger itself. We could build a better unit, manage the cost, and allow customers who already owned one of our two power supplies to save even more. Our soon to be released charger, the CRE55494, was designed to be used in conjunction with our readily available power supplies and will provide an approximate charging time under 2 hours.

With the battery choice and the charger decided, we knew that we needed a joiner to allow the charging and use of three gel cells at once. We wanted safety and reliability, so we designed in an auto cut-off to protect the cells from the danger of going to a negative voltage when the remaining current falls too low during usage. Our in-house designed joiner will be packed in conjunction with the charger and thus doesn’t have a separate part number.

Finally, we needed a way to make this all work with our locomotives, and we wanted ease of use here as well. We wanted an installation that even the least technical amongst us can manage simply. We decided that an "exterior" battery system best filled the need. Having to dismantle a locomotive to install a battery pack (and quite possibly a charging port) just wasn’t "ease of use" in our minds. Our battery system will mount in a gondola with metal ball bearing wheels (which are necessary to take the added weight of the batteries). There will be a slot in the car to run the cabling from the batteries to the loco. This cable added another consideration; power plugs on the locomotives. Beginning shortly, our newer locos will have a plug, positioned to be easily accessible, in the bottom of the loco to allow the cabling between the battery car and the loco to provide power.

We can hear you asking, "How does the loco know where to get power?" We had to deal with that as well. Our engineers decided to provide a three way switch to the motor that will allow an optional choice to cut off track power and use battery power, power the loco from the rails, or shift the loco into the "Motor Off" state.

We debated long and hard about using N_cd batteries in the loco or tender, but felt this would limit the amount of battery capacity to the amount of room inside. Also, you need the more expensive N_cds in each loco, where our trailing car concept means you only needed the one battery set for all of your locos (Plus of course, one optional back up set). For those of you with dozens of locos this seemed to be the best solution. Our thought process was: practicality of expense, ease of use, ease of charging and ease of set-up.

Running your trains without the MoW labor of track cleaning, without running complex wiring in underground tubes, never having to trace track shorts, no continuing need to perfect conductivity between track sections, nor the need to be careful about power sources in outdoor environments, ease of utilizing reverse loops, and the end of power blocks all lay ahead with our easy to use, affordable battery power system.

By design we have removed the obstacles to make this happen for the hobbyist and will have all of this on the market within this year (2000).

This battery system, coupled with our on board radio control mini-receiver CRE55490, and the onboard accessory device CRE55495, allows total control of your trains with plug and play ease of use.

Our newest production locos will have ports for radio control receivers, sound (with speakers already installed in the loco or tender shell), D.C.C. ports and D.C. to D.C. power boosters to make this all work with constant power even when the track voltage is low and the trains are stationary. It’s a full package of innovation that brings the technology of tomorrow to today’s hobbyists, whether they’re electronics wizards or not. It’s as user friendly as you can get and allows total control your trains, and the best part may be that there’s no one inch thick manual to read.

While our new locos will support plug and play D.C.C. installation and are compatible with simultaneous use. We remain committed to R/C which utilizes PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) where signals are sent, received, and interpreted as a packet with a one in a million chance of fault directly to the loco without passing through track that may not be clean. Several people transmitting at once cannot interfere with each other, so there is no confusion of signal. Thanks to the ever growing use of wireless telephones, this facility has vastly improved in recent years, and we the hobbyists benefit from this new technology.

Ease of use, reliability, value, and freedom from the drudgery of track cleaning; you told us you wanted them. We’re delivering. We believe this is the way to bring many new people into the hobby.

This has been our goal and we are in the home stretch to make this happen. Enjoy your trains! Run your trains! Control your trains with modern technology!

Aristo-Craft / Crest Train Engineer System and Battery Power System, "It’s not your father’s train control system!"

Keep your eye on the horizon. Take the long view. Spread the word about the hobby, and about Aristo-Craft / Crest, the power in Large Scale electronic systems.