The History
The idea of having a train came in a dream I thought I could build one easily, I soon found out it wasn't going to be easy. After many drawings, I set out to build the train. I bought motors, wheels, had the frame welded, built the track, then bought the gears, sprockets chains all to find out I had the wrong sizes.
I met Tobin Hill (an Engineer), he said I needed a lot of help. The idea I had would never work. I had him build it anyway's and like he said, it fell apart after a few tries. He came up with the drive shaft that we're currently using. After a while we started to have trouble with run times. The more children that went for a ride the more batteries we needed. Tobin knew Edger Hall, he came and looked over the project and came up with a solution. We went from 12 volts to 48 volts back to 12 volts. Which gave us the run time I needed so that no child was turned away because of dead batteries.
I wanted the train to go a little faster. This was a little harder than I thought. 5 motors and electronic equipment later we went a little faster. One night a Dad (Craig Wirtz) came with his children to ride the train. He said he new a lot about 48 volt systems. He offered to help with this. He told me about motor controllers, the next today I went to the web and looked up motor controllers. After going through several pages and sites, I finally got a company named "Total E Toys" in Phoenix Arizona. After many emails and phone calls with Dan Tack (Owner), I decided to buy his program. I rented a 16 foot truck and loaded 130 feet of tracks, 44 foot of train batteries and drove 1250 miles to get my current system. 7 Days later, I'm back in Texas showing Tobin and Edger the new motor. Tobin and Edger paired the new motor to the drive shaft and re-did the electrical system.
Thanks, goes to a lot of wonderful people. I had the best year ever. We ran up to 600 people a night. I'm at the yard every night so I get all the praise. But I'm going to list all the people that are involved with his project that deserve some of the praise.
Each name has a great story of generosity, talent, ideas, and the love of children.
Thanks for all your help God Bless you and your Families.
Tobin Hill
Edgar Hall
Dan Dunn
Jim Kelly
Craig Wirtz
George Chmielewski
Lester Electrical
Garland Sheet Metal
American Wireless
Cisco-Eagle
MR Battery
Cherrie Brown
Rich Rock
Mr. and Mrs. Hill
Shane Jenkins
Paul and Clint Bradbury
Dan Tack From Total E Toys.com
Jared Leverington (Web Developer)