Telma Photos

[Barn Owl]

Where is the point of disaster? If I get to messing with mine I don't want to find it the hard way.

[TomC]

BTC-it's too bad they don't make a Telma type retarder that instead of using electricity to power it, it would be a generator that would charge your batteries-like a big generator-similar to the dynamic braking that older DC motor Diesel train locomotives have (they actually still make DC motor drives-mainly for passenger service for the dynamic braking).  Good Luck, TomC

[boogiethecat]

Tom, there are things like that, although when you start charging batteries at those kind of whopping rates, it becomes more of a major system design, and for the most part, current  consumer" style batteries can't take that kind of charge rate.

I'm sure you know about this, basically just what you described...

http://www.allisontransmission.com/product/electricdrive/epsystem.jsp

PDF: http://www.allisontransmission.com/servlet/DownloadFile?Dir=publications/pubs&FileToGet=SA3592EN.pdf