LocoFi™ Forum - Recent Posts

Bachmann "Big Hauler" conversion

cliffhagman — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:52:00 +0000

I just completed my first conversion from track to battery power using LocoFi and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results! Tech support was amazing, and the product is a solid bet for large scale, especially with the “plug-and-play” version they offer. I wanted to replace the smoke unit on my Bachmann “Big Hauler” due it it’s underwhelming performance, so I selected a pulsed smoke generator by TrainLi. Thanks to LocoFi tech support they helped figure out some extra circuitry to integrate the smoker’s performance with the LocoFi module. Here’s the final product:

https://youtu.be/WrqumEkQaYo

RE: Hornby HO scale Flying Scotsman

Admin — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 01:43:07 +0000

Nice work getting a 30+ year old tender drive running. It was a great idea to use both the loco and tender pickups for better reliability. From the video, it looks more like the slowdown is happening on curves. Possibly traction, tight radius, wheel gauge, or some mechanical friction coming into play.

Great to see these older locos brought back to life.

If you get a chance, please share some installation details, tips/tricks and pictures that would be helpful for others as well.

Hornby HO scale Flying Scotsman

adesilva_1999 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 05:22:13 +0000

This loco is about 30+ years old! It is tender driven. Pickup is from the loco wheels as well as the tender wheels. I had to remove the two center wheels from the tender so that I could modify the pickup from the tender wheels. It has a three pole pancake motor. What I noticed is that it tends to slow down on irregular areas of the track unlike the diesels which are long and therefore they have better pickups.

Enjoy!

Ananda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxHPo3dvp5c

A horn file from Amtrak passenger train.

adesilva_1999 — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 02:21:40 +0000

The original sound track and video clip was with the courtesy of: Southern West Virginia Online.

Published on Facebook under the heading of: "Amtrak drops off a lone passenger in Thurmond!" Dated September 19th at 4:00 PM.

Amtrak engineers/operators seem to be doing very similar two burst horn sounds-one short and one long on every clip I have seen so far. They are also great videos and one can get great layout ideas.

Horn.txt

0003.wav

adesilva_1999 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 21:51:00 +0000

@Ken Myers

Tanks, Ken. If it helps anyone, I will be happy!

Ken Myers — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 10:55:26 +0000

Very nicely done with great information! ?

Admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 09:13:41 +0000

That's awesome! Thank you so much for sharing and keeping the community strong.

Hornby BR Class 37 sound

adesilva_1999 — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 23:34:36 +0000

I like the old Diesel startup and the "growling" engine sound for the Class 37.

Admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:31:32 +0000

@Brian Houston

Interesting proposition. We will look into it. Thanks for the tip!

RE: IOS App availability

Brian Houston — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:03:52 +0000

Has your team considered using the Kotlin Multiplatform ( https://kotlinlang.org/docs/multiplatform.html ) to allow your code to be both used on iOS as well as laptop platforms (ie Windows and OS/X)? Using an AI editor like Cursor would help make adjustments quickly to the mobile code without too much investment in time.