Designing a point motor for Snitzl.

To start with, I looked through all my early magazines for idea's on point motors and  came across an article from Sep 76 Model Railway titled 'A Revolutionary Point Motor ' by John Popkin. The snitzl design was to be a development of that design, but combined a sliding mechanism and point motor into one unit.

The design looked so straight forward that I went ahead and made enough components for twenty units. Some of the components ie worm gear, worm, screws and offset shaft with its  Mandrel, were time consuming to make. With only a couple of components missing to form a complete assembly I decided to put one together and try it. Well, shock horror, the action was far to fast even at 8 volts and far to noisy. I'd done everything I could on Snitzl to keep  noise levels down, with cork ballast and latex glue for ballasting and the noise from this point motor, amplified by the baseboard, was far to much.

There's a lesson to be learned here ( for me at least ), if you have an idea for anything,  don't make twenty.

Snitzl.