Radio control for Peco/kato England chassis

[Peter Halford]

I've successfully been running Radio controlled OO9 locos for several years having read Chris Wards article. The locos have Kato tram mechanisms which leaves enough space for the battery and the small receiver formerly availbe from Micron. When I saw the article in the August 2024 Railway Modeller describing fitting a decoder to the Peco Large England I wondered if, with some modification, a battery and receiver could be accommodated.
However I can't find any details of the dimensions of the chassis. It looks as if the die-cast metal split chassis could be cut down to provide more space and some lead used to replace the weight. The batteries I use are approximately 35mm x 10mm x 5mm. The decoder shown in the arlticle is 12mm x 10mm x 3mm.
I am thinking of using the chassis only as available from Peco and building a frelance body. It would just be nice to have loco with the motion visible rather than a skirted tram loco.

Any thoughts anyone.

[JulienW]

I'd be looking at other, smaller chassis as the Kato chassis block is quite large and I think you'd find it hard to come up with a believable body to accommodate the battery along with the receiver and associated wiring, and I'm not sure you'd have a running chassis after milling out the space (though I'm prepared to be proved wrong).

The Bachmann N-scale Percy springs to mind, is fairly easy to get (Dundas sell them, Tootaly Thomas is another source worth looking at) and may have the advantage that their smaller motor may draw less current meaning a smaller battery or more running time.

With the smaller size of the chassis I suspect there would be enough room for the electrical gubbins and a bit of weight to aid traction. The other thought would be to consider a small tender loco (something like the Fourdees "Furbero" perhaps, though it's not so easy to get a Bachmann quarry Hunslet at the moment) to give a bit more space (put the electrical gear in the tender and load the body with lead ballast).

[Peter Halford]

Helpful suggestions

thanks.