Julie always said she wanted a 'Class 55 Deltic'. Problem here is the physical size of such a locomotive in five inch gauge. The best compromise was to design and build a loco closely based upon the 'Class23 Baby Deltic'. This could be made to fit the length available in the Citroen Picasso family car - just.
The loco has been designed as a reliable source of motive power for regular passenger hauling, not as a 'fine scale' model.
A commercial 700W petrol inverter generator is used as the power source. The 230V AC output feeds a pair of 27V 350W industrial grade power converters which power the electronic motor controllers and ancillary equipment. It is possible to lift out the generator and replace it with a 24V 100AH lithium leisure battery as an alternative.
Traction power is from four 24V brushless motors, Nanotech DB59 220W. These are powered using STM3 motor controllers with a hidden touch-screen controller. This is the same as used in 'The Brute', but with input control from a radio control set.
Work is ongoing to update the electronics. The final system will employ four new and improved motor controllers with CAN bus control. These will connect to a new locomotive drivers controller driven using Bluetooth, radio control or other manual means - anything but the 'curly lead'.
Reworking of the electronics is not needed as such, but an academic exercise to keep Jon's mind alive is. The newly designed electronic products will not be offered for sale but the designs will be published here.
.
Giving it all away for FREE, here you can find proven designs for traction, brushless motor drivers and control systems, hints and tips on working with ARM Cortex microcontrollers, and much more from a long time spent as a Design Consultant to the Military, Electronics and Industry more generally.
Jon Freeman is a semi-retired Electronic Design Consultant - the electronics you may rely upon.
Mechanical stuff not so good, copy at your own risk.
This is the resource for anyone interested in Brushless Motors for traction, see 'Baby Deltic' for latest work in progress. Over to you.
You are free to copy and use anything found on jons-workshop.com . Hope you find this a useful reference, please let us know if you do.
Other stuff coming soon? - Maybe
Jon Freeman B Eng Hons is a qualified Digital Systems Engineer, more at home with electronics and software development than mechanics.
Member of :
IET - Institution of Engineering and Technology
Taunton Model Engineers [web]
Bristol Society of Model and Experimental Engineers [web]
Downloads - Please Note - You can download many types of files here - pdf documents, jpg images, spreadsheets and all sorts.
Other stuff :
Signalling - a collaborative project for TME at West Buckland - where things have adopted geolocial time scales - TME Sigs site
Julie's Celebration[web]
Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol[web]
Mina Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol[web]
History of Radio Groovy Granny [web]
Groovy Granny Radio test [web]