Battery Trial

I happened to come across a PBL Foreground K-27 at an amazing price which I scooped up.  I spent Saturday afternoon converting it from DC/Sound to DCC/Sound/Battery.  This was actually my first full conversion over to the DSR1 + TCS Wowsound.

Overall reaction: mixed feelings.

But first, here it is running on it's own power.




Being completely "self contained" is really cool.  And the Wowsound decoder is top of the line.  There were two things I noticed however:

1. The batteries are really packed in there and I have no idea how they would be removed for charging.  Yes, batteries plural.  The Wowsound is a beast and requires a decent amount of power to run.  Right now charging the batteries would invovle removing the tender trucks, removing the tender shell, disconnecting all electronics in the tender in order to unplug the batteries.
2. There was a couple times where the locomotive either continued doing the previous command even though I had stopped it -OR- it didn't acknowledge that I had sent a command.  Well, that's not good.  I'm not sure if this was the DCC system, the radio system, or the decoder.  I suspect the radio system.  I haven't modified the antenna and the receiver is inside a brass tender.

I'm not sure what to think of these two issues.  There are ways I could solve either.  I think these are my possible routes:

1. Give up on the DRS1 and Wowsound and go back to the S-Cab.  This would allow me to use the BPS which charges the batteries from the rails so that they don't need to be removed.
2. Give up on the Wowsound and go with a Tsunami.  This would allow me to use just a single battery.  I could then make some kind of hatch or port by which the battery could be plugged in for charging.
3. Give up on the DSR1 but keep the Wowsound and just go with "regular" track powered DCC.  Add a keep alive circuit to the decoder and call it a day.

I'm slightly leaning towards option #3.  Battery control might continue to improve in the future and there's always the chance to go radio/battery later.  Going S-Cab now locks me in to a certain degree.

It's a bummer because I was really looking to avoid wiring the track.  However I had wanted to run a switcher diesel and I had no idea how that was going to be powered.  I can always keep the DSR1 for a Galloping Goose and pair it with a ESU Loksound diesel decoder.  Yeah, I guess we'll see.  I need to think this over some more.