Mid (19th) Century Models on Shapeways

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Ok, who's gonna be the first  with a working Rocket?

https://www.shapeways.com/shops/newman-miniatures

[dem34]

[Ed Kapuscinski]

It kills me to see it all running on code 180 rail!

Someone ship that guy a bundle of ME Code 40.

[peteski]

I have a nice factory-made Der Adler set from Minitrix. I even installed a decoder in it.  It is from about the same period as the Rocket.

[Mark5]

Someone ship that guy a bundle of ME Code 40.

Code 40 would be way too big for that era! 

[dem34]

Ring up DKS for some Code 25 Jewelry Wire.

[mmagliaro]

Okay, I am such a sucker for a mechanism challenge like this.
I bought the version 1 engine and tender.   

Look on the bright side.  There is only one driver.  No quartering to worry about!

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Okay, I am such a sucker for a mechanism challenge like this.
I bought the version 1 engine and tender.   

Look on the bright side.  There is only one driver.  No quartering to worry about!

Yessssss.

Mission accomplished. 

[mmagliaro]

Yessssss.

Mission accomplished. 

I figured you were baiting us on the forum.  I don't know why this had such instant appeal, but the moment I saw it,
I just had to buy one and see if I could fit gears and a motor... and pickups, and...  to make it run.

[Chris333]

Think he powered it by pushed with a powered coach.

[mmagliaro]

Think he powered it by pushed with a powered coach.

Yep, that's how he did it.  But that's not how I'm going to do it.   Must... move.... on.... its... OWN.
He says the boiler is hollow, so I'll just have to see what I can fit in there.  I'm already planning to get all the tender wheels,
and the little unpowered wheelset on the engine, to have all-wheel pickup.  So with 6 live wheels, it might have a chance.  Or I might go the other route and try for a tiny motor in the tender to power those wheels more like a diesel truck.

[Chris333]

https://www.marklin.com/products/details/article/88025
A belt powers the other axle
http://www.zscalemonster.com/marklin/rolling/88025.jpg

Uses some bell shaped armature?
https://zscalehobo.com/marklin/296142.html?fbclid=IwAR1ZXK8GJ8cA95s848KYe31Db4gCEdYpDpZYkddb5HAKTGr66HoSyd1e218

[mmagliaro]

https://www.marklin.com/products/details/article/88025
A belt powers the other axle
http://www.zscalemonster.com/marklin/rolling/88025.jpg

Uses some bell shaped armature?
https://zscalehobo.com/marklin/296142.html?fbclid=IwAR1ZXK8GJ8cA95s848KYe31Db4gCEdYpDpZYkddb5HAKTGr66HoSyd1e218

I'm pretty sure they mean a coreless motor when they say "bell shaped"... If you think of the shape of a coreless motor's armature, it's like a cup, and is also sometimes called a bell.
I'm thinking a small coreless motor with a very high gear ratio to the driven wheel.  I really won't know until I get it in a few weeks and see what I have to work with.

One of the hardest parts of this is going to be the wheels.  The wheels shown on the running example are the right diameter, but that's about all that is right about them.  They don't look right at all for this engine.  The Rocket did not have any counterweight on the driver, and wheels look much more like wooden wagon wheels with a metal rim on them (because that's pretty much what they were) as opposed to chunky, flanged locomotive wheels.  The wheels need to be very spindly and open.  The big driver is 56", 12 spoke, and the trailing wheel is 30", also 12-spoke.  The tender wheels are 33", 8 spoke.
These are going to be very tricky to find.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I figured you were baiting us on the forum.  I don't know why this had such instant appeal, but the moment I saw it,
I just had to buy one and see if I could fit gears and a motor... and pickups, and...  to make it run.

I 100% was. I figured either you, @randgust or @u18b would take the bait.

I cannot wait to see what you do with it!

[randgust]

Nope.  I just found another really nice mechanism to work on a 25-tonner with, so far, so good.

But, this thing is just so absurdly tiny that I'll mention it here as a possible powered chassis for something useful.

This double worm drive 4x4 with a spur reduction isn't a new concept, but this one has a couple things going for it.  First, the motor is really narrow, narrow enough to work with some tweaking in the narrow 25-tonner hood, second that the wheels have a wider tread and slightly deeper flange so that they track a lot better over Peco electrofrogs than the regauged Z wheels on a couple of the other ones I've tried.   And the whole thing is put together with screws, not soldered or cast, so you can get in there to tweak about everything, including pull the wheels and replace them with something else.   

Making it easier, there's a whole lot of similar chassis from ARU, the one I'm messing with is the ARU Model A4008

This is maybe the fourth chassis I've tried of this design, going back to the "Nigel Nightmare" that had the rubber grommet drive reduction, the Z-tech attempt, and the far better one done now by Showcase Miniatures with the big spur gears.    The concept is solid, but getting one to work reliably on tracking and pickup remains difficult, to be kind.   I'm looking at adding some pickup springs and equalization in the ARU as soon as I can determine how much weight can be piled in the shell.   

When you get to little ones, you can get the mechanism, but finding decent wheels and solving electrical pickup is what separates 'nice try' from 'wow' at this point.

I'm still a big fan of the 6mm GM15A 25:1 gearhead motors 3.5v. with a 100-ohm resistor, nudging toward a tender drive option.   Can't beat those for the price, only downside is that they really are slow, and at full RPM it sounds like you're powering something with a very angry bee.

I can see one of the real problems is that with two different sized wheels on the 'locomotive', you're stuck with powering one axle.  So getting enough weight over that one powered axle means as much metal as humanly possible up there - brass, cast, whatever.   If you push it from the tender or the cars, you've got at least two equal-sized axles to work with.   Gearhead motor in the locomotive driving power axles in the tender?