Beginnings ... rebirth

The train runs nicely now up and down thanks to the buck converters.

Emailing pictures around just won't fly. I tell others not to do it so I better not. The buck converters were $15 each. They have a tiny screw to set the voltage. The Texas Flyer climbs well at 7.5 V and comes down smooth at 6 V. All these are DC.

The converters were pretty much a rip off at the local store. They can be had direct from China for a couple of bucks. These feel loose with components not having solid seating. The output cap on the left one fell off when I took it out of the bag. I soldered it back on instead of going back to complain. I think most would do the same.
Here is the transformer experiment:

It is an AC wall wart with the primary coil stripped out and replaced with ten turns of hookup wire. With 18V in I get 2 V out. The 10x scale is exactly as expected. Would need 40 turns of fine wire to get 8V for the uphill. So this is theoretically possible. But not reasonable.

More to come soon
Chuck