Tender drive mechanism?

[belstone]

I spotted this little beastie for not much money and thought it might make a powered box van for assisting locomotives with long trains:



I couldn't find information anywhere on the wheelbase, just the overall length.  It turned out to be 27mm between wheel centres, i.e. 13' 6" which isn't especially useful as I cannot find any van with that wheelbase.  I tried it out and it ran beautifully and showed no inclination to stall on points despite having only four wheels and weighing nothing.  So I took it to bits, as you do.



Ooh look.  Coreless motor and a flywheel.  Very tasty, I don't know how they do it for the price.  The motor is fed by wires, so fitting a DCC chip would be no bother.  It's a very low profile mechanism as well.  And then I started thinking: what has a wheelbase around 27mm in N gauge?





OK, it only has four wheels rather than six.  But the centre wheelset on most tenders is almost entirely hidden by the framing, so I reckon you'd get away cutting a wheelset in half and gluing the two halves to the underside so that they almost touch the rails but not quite.  The wheels are small for a tender as well, but no worse than Union Mills.  Even with a fairly small tender body there is room for a fair bit of lead above the drive unit and a small DCC chip as well.  No traction tyres so it isn't going to pull the side off a house, but I reckon one of these inside a tender would handle 4-5 coaches no bother.

I might (if I find the time) try this out on my "spare" Farish J39, which has a badly butchered tender drive and isn't a lot of use at the moment.  This could be a very handy little unit for people scratchbuilding strange old steam locomotives:  the "D34" I want to build looks a lot easier if I don't need to motorise the loco.

Richard

[Capri_sam]

Interesting! I've always liked the potential of these little units. Interestingly the wheelbase isn't far off that used for BR-era tarped ferry wagons (see the Peco classic). It's only 6" too short to scale in terms of wheelbase, which I've always thought is excusble.

I've had inclinations to 3D print a correct-sized tarp wagon shell for it in the past and a slightly thicker underframe to try and hide some of the mechanism, in order to help my lighter shunters haul more reasonable length trains around the harbour scene.

[belstone]

I realised on looking at this unit again that it is even cleverer than I thought.  It has suspension!  The wheels on one side are fixed height, those on the other side use the contact strip (which bears on the conical axle ends) as a pivoting beam, providing a very effective compensation system so that all four wheels are in contact with the rails at all times.  I have also found that Peters Spares have a very large stock of Peco Collett Goods components, enough to build a rolling loco chassis for a bit over a tenner.

A Collett Goods is 7'3" + 8'3" wheelbase with 5'2" drivers. That's not a million miles off an ex North British J36 (7'6" + 8'0", 5'0") although a touch short for almost anything else I have looked at. I may have the beginnings of a plan to fill a big gap in my loco fleet for "Stobs".  J36s were used as banking engines Hawick-Whitrope: to reproduce these operations in N gauge I need something very smooth running, light and not too powerful in itself. 

Richard

[ntpntpntp]

Ah so that's the new version mechanism which replaces the old 11-103.  Looks interesting.

[belstone]

I have played about with this little mechanism and am amazed at how much I have been able to cut it down without killing it.



Basically the only bit of plastic left is the motor cover.  I cut off the side frames and ends, then I drilled and tapped the chassis to take a couple of screws to secure the pickup beams, which allowed me to get rid of the bulky plastic keeper plate.  It runs just as well as it did before.  Kato have used a slippery plastic for the underframe moulding, most likely polypropylene which is not easy to glue anything to.  Better to get rid of it altogether, although I now have the problem of trying to build a tender body which will drop straight over the motor cover and sit square and level.



This is why I am so interested in this mechanism.  A J36 is tricky in N gauge with a small boilered loco attached to a small tender.  Not much room anywhere for a mechanism, but the Kato unit will fit in the tender with room to spare.  The wheelbase is a little long but not enough to worry me. Once I get started on this latest project I will put it in my scratchbodge thread.

Richard

[Bob G]

I do love ideas like these.
Ultimately, one idea will become super-important and everyone will wonder why they never thought of it before.
Its almost like the idea that uses the Terrier chassis in a tender.
Brilliant!

Best
Bob

[Marshi]

I was just about to buy 2 of these online tonight.
I need the 11-110 for what I doing (60mm or 2.36inches)
The 11-110 is an update of the 11-104
11-109 is the size of the old 11-103 and
11-108 is the size of the old 11-102
I think the old ones had a brush motor and the new ones are brush less. I may be wrong.
The reason I haven't bought them yet is I need a matching truck without a motor to couple to. I can't seem to find one but I'm still looking....
I'm almost at the point where I'm going to buy cheap two car trolleys and use those trucks instead. Problem is they won't be Kato.

[belstone]

I was just about to buy 2 of these online tonight.
I need the 11-110 for what I doing (60mm or 2.36inches)
The 11-110 is an update of the 11-104
11-109 is the size of the old 11-103 and
11-108 is the size of the old 11-102
I think the old ones had a brush motor and the new ones are brush less. I may be wrong.
The reason I haven't bought them yet is I need a matching truck without a motor to couple to. I can't seem to find one but I'm still looking....
I'm almost at the point where I'm going to buy cheap two car trolleys and use those trucks instead. Problem is they won't be Kato.

I don't know which underframe this uses but you'll get one powered, one identical dummy and a very pretty little unpowered steam loco that I suspect would fetch £25 on eBay.

https://www.osbornsmodels.com/kato-10-503-1-pocket-line-steam-passenger-train-pack-48151-p.asp

Richard

[Marshi]

Thanks Richard
Your reply ended up having me find 14-503-1
Now I get to spend half the day searching Japanese web sites to get the specs/dimensions

[Railwaygun]

Thanks Richard
Your reply ended up having me find 14-503-1
Now I get to spend half the day searching Japanese web sites to get the specs/dimensions

ask Keith at  Train Trax ( an advertiser here)

Keith Blanchard
Train Trax
Heath House
The Ridgeway
Lightwater
Surrey GU18 5XS

Email: Sales@Traintrax.co.uk

https://www.traintrax.co.uk/11110-power-unit-small-passenger-cars-p-1850.html

(their little train set is only £50!)

https://www.traintrax.co.uk/kato-pocket-line-series-c-53.html

[Marshi]

Thanks again Richard, I'll need to do some measuring when I get home.
In the meantime I found the Tomytec TM-LRT01 or 02 or 03, it's articulating so it may be much easier for me.
http://trainweb.org/tomix/chassis_dim.htm