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Inspection Car
One of my magazines had an article on track inspection cars, and they included this advertisement from the early 20th century.
I really like the look of the motorized one. I made an earlier one using the Radio Shack Zip Zaps, but it really doesn't last long on a charge. Jon Radder in Massachusetts provided me with a Stomper, so I decided to use that as a base for a new one.
I got some spoked wheels from Ozark and crafted the rest from styrene, brass wire, and Sculpey.
The finished model is on the right.
The woman is a commercial figure, but the man was scratch-built using brass wire and Sculpey.
The Stomper runs on a single AA battery and can make many laps on a single charge.
I routed the headlight from the Stomper to light the lantern.
Now I have something to easily make the rounds on my layout.
The fixed speed is a tad too fast for my taste.
Earlier, I discovered that Radio Shack sells little remote control battery powered cars, called ZipZaps. Ever since I first saw them, I thought there had to be a use for them.
I picked one up on sale for $12.
They come with a little charger to power the car. The charger takes 4 AA batteries and takes about a minute to charge the car.
Yep, that's right, you also don't get a LOT of time for this to run!
But, the charger also functions as your RC. It does forward, reverse and steering. (You really don't need steering when running on rails!)
All of a sudden, I was inspired. I thought this could work!
It's a bit faster than I really wanted, but where else can you get battery and RC for $12???? :) It only runs for a couple of minutes, but it looks sweet going down the track.
So, after playing around with some styrene, some old motor parts, and some O scale trucks, I came up with my version of the narrow gauge inspection car, pictured at right.
The battery eventually quit working, so I built the Stomper-based version above.