If the "system" is isolated form the track there should be no reason not to be able to have power to the tracks while running battery power.
What I want to figure out is how or what to use to measure how long I've run an engine under battery power. I often run an engine for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1hour, up to when the battery needs recharging. I need something that will keep track of these accumulative short runs that I can easily see (clock display?) so I'll know when it's time to recharge. Right now I simply wait until I "feel" it's time...or the engine stops!!! The Deltang boards have a circuit that cuts off to prevent the battery from going down to 0.
