For people who build their own model trains there are a range of manufacturers from whom a power bogie containing the motor and drive can be sourced. But as [Le petit train du Berry] shows us in a video, it’s possible to make one yourself and it’s easier than you might think (French language video with truly awful YouTube auto-translation).
At the heart of the design is a coreless motor driving a worm gear at each end that engages with a gear on each axle. The wheelsets and power pickups are off-the-shelf items. The chassis meanwhile is 3D printed, and since this is an ongoing project we see two versions in the video. The V5 model adds a bearing, which its predecessor lacked.
The result is a pretty good power bogie, but it’s not without its faults. The gear ratio used is on the high side in order to save height under a model train body, and in the version without a bearing a hard-wearing filament is required because PLA will wear easily. We’re guessing this isn’t the last we’ll see of this project, so we hope those are addressed in future versions.
We like this project and we think you will too after you’ve watched the video below the break. For more home-made model railway power, how about a linear motor?
H0 is H-zero
But I see the Christmas spirit struck the author, ho ho ho!
HO is Half-O. Unless you’re German.
Märklin was German, so I trust them. It just happens so that zero is also called “Oh” as in O-day, which is written 0-day. But ignorance is bliss indeed, no offence.
It’s just the same as with Greenwich and sandwich. People rather prefer to get hammered down than being the nail that sticks out. Cheers and have a nice Christmas regardless, no matter if it is Grennich and woostersauce.
It does stand for Half Zero, but everybody (other than in German and Japan) pronounce it HO (H-oh). Also O gauge and OO gauge are pronounced with ‘oh’ and ‘oh oh’, even though it was originally Zero Gauge (or Zero Scale), and Double Zero Gauge.
Oh, on the ignorance part, I don’t think it’s Mark or Jenny displacing the ignorance here, no offence. Certainly using the correct nomenclature for the culture(s) you are address can hardly be called ‘ignorance’. Reminding people the ‘zero’ origin of the ‘oh’ is not ignorance, but calling people ignorant for using the modern, accepted, widely used term, that looks like ignorance. Oh well!
Anyway, cheers and have great Christmas!
(French language video with truly awful YouTube auto-translation) as others languages with YouTube auto-translation…
This reminds me a lot of the “stomper” 4×4 toys I played with as a kid in the 80’s. Exact same drive mechanism. Might need to 3d print some stompers!
Don’t forget to print the big tires, also
It just seems right to think about trains at Christmas…
I went without the subtitles to practice my French listening (I maybe understood 20 to 30%…désolé), and I skipped a bit, but my impression was that this power truck will go reasonably fast, but isn’t really capable of smooth, slooooow crawling speed. Low speed smoothness really enhances realism.