@MainLine Steam posted:Thank you once again for your help with this.
I love the idea of a converter. I posted and then went to make lunch. I started to think maybe it would make more sense to just put a rechargeable battery in the Baggage Car. I gotta say it is amazing how little power LED lights draw. The converter is even better though. Now I can take all the rollers off all the cars.
Are you really "game" to chuck the rollers and tether power between cars?!
This is so prototypical! Whether you "disguise" the 2-wire tether as, say, steam-brake lines between cars, or as electrical distribution as used in Circus Trains (from the generator car) or in modern Amtrak HEP electrical car-to-car cabling.
It's not just the roller noise, but also the drag from the center-rail rollers and to a lesser extent the electrical wipers on the outer-rail connection. But you also save engine motive power though 99.9% of folk don't care about engine power draw.
I'd go with a voltage controlled distribution. Having power centralized also allow "tricks" such as perhaps controlling passenger car lighting remotely. So you can turn power on/off with a single wireless control rather than fussing with flipping on/off switches one at a time on every powered car is a long passenger consist.
I don't believe (somebody show me otherwise!) there has been an OGR topic on a centralized battery-rechargeable passenger car tethering system which provides flicker-tolerance, brightness control, and so on.
