RJRs Branch Lines

I am still amazed at the fabrication speed! What was the chassis and underframe from?

The chassis and under frame are styrene and built as part of the bodywork.

 

This is the baseplate

 

 

 

The bogies I originally constructed fro my previous class 25 model and are just plasti card sides hiding a pair of playmobil motor blocks.

 

 

The basic side cloaking

 

 

The partially finished bogies under the class 25 base frame

 

 

The originally Playmobil motor block, the conrods stay on as the motor powers only one axle

 

 

I have re used the bogies from the 25 to cut costs, as they are common to both models it means the class 20 has currently cost me about £20 for plastic and paint.

 

Hope this answers your question.

Thats very clever. Sure beats £600 plus for manufacturers locos! So you could use two motor bogies on the same speed controller for bigger diesels like the deltic? I am moving house soon and am wondering wether I could plan this into the garden! What R/C gear did you use to upgrade the playmo stuff? I have a few sets around somewhere but never thought I'd be thinking of using them in a train for my garden...

The Playmo motors come with built in R/C receivers which work on standard 27Mhz of the type that are used in R/C cars. On the underside of the motor block is a slot for the crystal they also carry their own battery pack which is 4AA cells that power the motor and receiver. It is possible to use 2 motor blocks as manufactured on the same frequency so they would work in tandem as you say, one in each bogie.

 

The simple upgrade would be to use a decent R/C transmitter keeping the built in receiver, as the supplied transmitter is not very powerful and hence has quite a poor range. The receivers respond to channel 1 which is general the forward / reverse joystick on a transmitter.

 

A very clever function of the motor blocks is part of the design to be resilient as a toy, if you put two motor blocks back to back on the same frequency they will want to go opposite ways , but one will "give in" and change its direction rather than struggle !

 

The best upgrade would be to replace the receiver in the motor block with a more modern 2.4GHz one and matching 2.4GHz transmitter. These more modern systems are much less prone to interference but the big benefit is the transmitter can be "paired" with up to 6 receivers. It is then simply a case of selecting which of 6 models to control from a switch on the transmitter. It would be like battery powered R/C meets DCC

 

Hope this helps, If you need more specific answers just ask.

Thanks- will PM you when I can decide what to do!