Test of New Trolley Electronics

I spent much of the day yesterday finishing up wiring the large scale trolley for the new electronics, new motor block, and new battery power.  

I had all sorts of room in my big steam locomotive's tender when I did this same upgrade to that locomotive but this trolley has far less room so it was a frustratingly tight fit and things are not fitting as well as I would have preferred.  That being said, even with seeing some wires inside the trolley, this was definitely a worthwhile upgrade because I would not have used the trolley otherwise.    

My plan was to keep everything I added to this trolley out of sight.  I added a lot...  the battery was perhaps the largest thing, a speaker in a homemade speaker box is large too, the electronic circuit board, a charging jack, a fuse holder, an on-off-on switch, and all the wiring.  I was hoping to be able to hide everything snugly up against the underside of the roof while the jack, switch and fuse would be under the seats with access from underneath the trolley.  Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room for everything I added so I still have wiring visible in the interior of the trolley.  I might be able to improve upon this but, for now, I think I am done. (I could use a break!)  At the time of the video below, I couldn't even re-install the roof due to all the wild wiring.  Since then, things are a bit more tidy but not perfect.

This type of work always seems to take far longer than you would think.  Every wiring connection required soldering so that really slows things down significantly.  What also slowed me down was constantly thinking about each step to avoid making a mistake.  I was second-guessing everything as I was installing everything.  In some cases, I had to change my plans while required more thinking.  It was slow going.

By dinnertime, I was ready to power up the trolley to test it.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, at this stage of the upgrades I couldn't get the roof to fit with all the wires in the way so I just placed the roof on top of all the wiring.  Still...  I was able to power up the trolley to test it.

Oh...  I made the same mistake in powering up the trolley as I did when I first powered up the steam locomotive...  I forgot to install a fuse in the fuse holder so the circuit board was not getting power.  In both instances, I figured out the problem within a minute or two but that is a lousy feeling when your circuit board does not power up as it should!

This trolley is controlled by the same app I use for controlling my steam locomotive for the garden railroad.  The app is the same but features are different since there is a big difference between steam locomotives and electric trolleys.  There are also a lot of settings to customize (which I am still in the process of doing).  When I powered up the trolley, it was a bit exciting to see the differences when compared to running my steam locomotive.

So, after dinner last night, I powered up this trolley as it sat on our kitchen table and tested many of its features...