If you take the wheels off a FIAT Punto, you might just notice that those rims fit nicely on a rail. [AT Lab] did, and the resulting build makes for a very watchable video.
Some of us have been known to spend a little too much time chasing trains, and there’s little on rails that won’t catch a railfan’s eye. That goes for rail speeders too, home constructed railcarts for exploring abandoned lines, and there are some great builds out there. We like the one in the video below the break, but we can’t help noticing a flaw which might just curtail its career.
It’s a simple enough build, a wooden chassis, a single motor and chain drive to one axle. All the wheel fittings are 3D printed, which might be a case of using the one tool you have to do everything, but seems to work. It rides well on the test track which appears to be an abandoned industrial siding, but it’s in those wheels we can see the problem and we guess that perhaps the builder is not familiar with rails. The Punto wheels have an inner rim and an outer rim, while a true rail wheel only has an inner one. There’s a good reason for this; real railways have points and other trackwork, not to mention recessed rails at road crossings or the like. We love the cart, but we’d cut those inner rims off to avoid painful derailments.
If you’re up for the ultimate railway build, take care not to go near a live line, and make sure you follow this video series.
