Are two battery boxes able to be hooked up on the same train?

[edsmith0075]

Greetings crew,

I am curious if anyone has ever hooked up two battery boxes on the same PF train setup. I would like to get a bit longer/more juice out of my trains and am wondering if two PF battery boxes can be wired together?

Any advice will be appreciated.

Ed

[Duq]

Most of us worry about where to hide just a single battery box...

I haven't tried it but I can't see why it wouldn't work; just hook them up with the extension wire.

[edsmith0075]

My concern is incorrect voltage. I asked because I don't want to fry or damage anything.

[Duq]

If you connect them using the extension wire they'll be in parallel so the voltage stays the same.

You do want to make sure the polarity switch is set the same on both boxes or else you're shorting them which will result in empty batteries and possibly a fairly hot extension cable.

[1974]

It's never a good idea to parallel batteries. The more advanced the types, the more care you need (balancing resistors and what not)

If you want more juice, you use the same amount of cells, but with higher capacity. This however, means going out of the LEGO realm

I would not parallel standard LEGO batteryboxes (both types) as you cannot be sure that the batteries you're using are close enough in spec/voltage

Also, with double the current capacity, you're approuching the safety of the wires used by TLG

In short (<- bad pun!), it might work, but I'd never do it

[pinioncorp]

I have done it, and it does work, but not with the capacity you'd expect. The train will go for longer but not that much longer, I'd say maybe only 50% extra. I haven't tried the newer version of the IR receiver yet though, that is supposed to be able to manage better.

If you're curious, see my post on the PF Conversion: Metroliner thread.

[hoeij]

I would not recommend to connect two battery boxes.

If you want a longer battery life, you could wire 4 or 5 AA batteries together (6 might not fit in the engine)

and connect that to the PF receiver. Make sure to get the polarity right! (you need to have a volt meter

before you do anything like this).