I'm just thinking out loud on this one, have enough other projects to keep me busy, but I hope what I'm thinking of is possible for the future.
I'd like to light my passenger cars, but don't want to take power from the rails to do so because I'm doing DC and that means when the train stops the lights go off. So I'm thinking of hiding a couple AAA rechargable batteries in the roof where they won't show and turning the lights on and off with a reed-switch and a magnet-on-a-stick. Would it be possible to build a recharging circuit into the car itself, say with a plug on the bottom so I could just plug it into a power source to recharge? Or even thru the wheels so I'd just have to set the thing on a piece of track with juice flowing to it. This way I wouldn't have to keep taking the models apart, and as long as I could get one operating session out of a charge it would be fine.
Has anyone tried anything like this?
I'd like to light my passenger cars, but don't want to take power from the rails to do so because I'm doing DC and that means when the train stops the lights go off. So I'm thinking of hiding a couple AAA rechargable batteries in the roof where they won't show and turning the lights on and off with a reed-switch and a magnet-on-a-stick. Would it be possible to build a recharging circuit into the car itself, say with a plug on the bottom so I could just plug it into a power source to recharge? Or even thru the wheels so I'd just have to set the thing on a piece of track with juice flowing to it. This way I wouldn't have to keep taking the models apart, and as long as I could get one operating session out of a charge it would be fine.
Has anyone tried anything like this?