I've been away from my trains for at least 8 months. Some of my MTH stuff hasn't been run in at least that time. So, I've got some charging questions. In the past, if I ran them often, I charged them up by just running them. When new, I gave them 12 hour charges with my MTH plug in charger. I started doing that with my engines yesterday, but I have quite a few and it will take at least a week to charge them all at 12 hours a pop. I've never used the "put it on the track and let sit for 6 hour" method, but I'm considering it. My first question is.....can I just use a piece of track connected to my bench transformer for that purpose. The transformer would be powering it conventional (without DCS signal). Would that work? If it does, I could probably do 3 engines at a time on that piece of track. I tried it for a few minutes to see what would happen with the engine. The headlight is on along with motor sounds and occasional dialog. Will that matter? The engines with smoke units , I can turn off the smoke, but can't really turn off those sounds without connecting to DCS. I'd rather not have the engines charging on my full layout overnight with the sounds operating. Any alternatives to this to speed up the charging process?
Thanks
-Roger
If you want to charge them on that track, turn off the smoke and sound, they'll be quiet and just charge.