Any Model Railroaders Here ?

well i bought the bigboy. I wanted original paint job but they're sold out so i got weathered. I put a second pic in of a comparison to an average sized diesel.

 

I've had my post-war Lionel "O" gauge set since about 1967. My dad bought it "used" for me for Christmas. It's all stuff from the 50's to early 60's.

It comes out every Christmas now. The kids and people that come over love it.

What do you have for sale? I might be interested in purchasing it as a whole. PM me.

 

I've been tinkering around with model railroad for years. Unfortunately we're moving, so I've had to tear down my last layout. It was Canadian National circa 1960, and for the next layout I'm going to rebuild it and with the larger room I'll be adding a European set-up, Deutsche Reichsbahn circa 1948-68 to go in next to it. The contrast between the two styles should be interesting; - it's just that I'll probably have to re-engine all of the German steam engines I have since they were made in East Germany and aren't very good runners. Anyone have any experience with "can" motors?

 

I have repowered/regeared a number of older brass steam locomotives. These have been exclusively in HO scale, many were done with Sagami "can" motors, which are no longer available. This is a shame, as they made a fine quality 16,500 rpm motor which worked very well with the high quality 40:1 gearboxes factory installed in older Japanese brass.

Since the demise of Sagami, I have adopted a flat sided five pole cylindrical motor from Canon. This motor's 12 volt top speed of 8,200 rpm requires me to change gear boxes, and I managed to acquire a few Samhongsa (now out of business) 27:1 gear boxes. (see pic). This is the same mechanism used in many of the modern brass imports, and makes for a very smooth running model.

I have also used some of the fine gear boxes made by Northwest Short Line, but these need to be assembled and are very sensative to slight mis-alignments. If they are assembled correctly they work flawlessly. If assembled incorrectly, they will wear out quickly, and sound like a coffee grinder while they do it.

It is getting harder to find modern cylindrical motors that spin enough rpm, and produce enough torque to be suitable for model train applications. As I recall, there is a dealer in Texas who has a large stock of motors from Canon, Faulhaber, Maxon, etc. He has listings on eBay under the name microlocmotion, but his listings are VERY confusing. Seldom does he list the rated rpm for his motors. This is probably because all modern coreless motors are built for various voltages and the operating rpm of a 6 volt motor can be close to that of a 24 volt motor. And they look identical. If you deal with him, make certain that you are buying motors designed to operate at 12 to 18 volts to ensure compatibility with current DC and DCC power supplies. Many of these modern motors also have very small diameter output shafts. Beware of these, as there may not be drive line couplings available to fit them.

I wish it weren't so complicated these days.