Can you say battery powered N scale? Battery technology has done well in the last couple years and I venture to say some of the LiPo batteries are only going to get smaller in the next couple years and you could probably run a layout without the worry of track power using some dedicated battery cars behind the locos. G scalers do it all the time. Imagine a loco drawing maybe 1/2A at full power trailing (2) dedicated cars each carrying and 11.4V battery pack (250mA or so) wired in parallel. Basically you have 500mA of capacity or 1/2 amp hour (that is unless I am misunderstaning battery basics). At full power you could run that loco for 1 hour. While sizing of the various parts would be difficult it would act a lot like a DCC layout. Using a ESC use in snall electric airplanes and a small RC receiver and you could fit all the gear in 4 dedicated cars or less. Exposed wiring woud be an issue but if all you need is a lot of track and a train running around them it would do nicely. Maybe I'm wrong but there is no real difference between doing train and doing planes other than size. Add mor batteries and locos and you run one heck of a train. Just my 2 cents. John
With all the N-scale locomotives with uncovered gears in the bottom of the truck it would cause you a real problem. Any bit of sand (in the air) and your loco would cease in no time.
