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Speaking of Tomy, what ever happened to the Tomy PCCs that were debuted at the Louisville NMRA Convention National Train Show? They were really nice. It would be a shame if the lack of N Scale savy of one importer squashed the project! They were very good looking cars!Charlie Vlk
I'm a big fan of Japanese chassis by Kato, Tomytec, and find myself looking at Bandai and Green Max despite some bad stuff years ago.The ability to take these inexpensive drive parts and make them into something else (including freight motors) has one big drawback- most of them are incredibly fast. So if you can live with one-truck drive and a gearhead, pretty much the sky is the limit.Randy Stahl challenged me to power his North Shore Electric 756 battery electric, and when we make some modifications on the Shapeways print, another steeplecab that's even smaller. So this is a Tomytec truck, universals, Shapeways body and truck sideframes, my cast resin adapter frame, Atlas pickup strips, a 100-ohm resistor and a Solarbotics 25:1 gearhead (GM15A). It really runs well, particularly good on slow speed and steady torque issues now.I'm selling the frame adapter and weight set, the body and trucks are already on Shapeways. I haven't written a formal instruction set yet until I see, frankly, if anybody else except Randy and I wanted to take a shot at this. They are certainly repeatable enough for me to offer custom builds as long as the Shapeways designer holds up. I did a similar thing with GE 25-tonners and did a handful.Here's the Shapeways link as their search feature is beyond hope: https://www.shapeways.com/product/QFKWTQAKF/cnsm-battery-loco-455-456?optionId=14304668&li=shopsYes, I've beaten the mechanism. Period.The smaller North Shore steeplecab will be done pretty much the same way. I had to have the designer widen the nose by 1mm to be able to clear the Tomytec truck tower diameter inside, but that's the only concession.When you're working with one-truckers that have to actually pull something (like a freight motor) you want to load as much weight as humanly possible over the power truck, and just put enough weight over the unpowered truck to get consistent electrical pickup. It's never as good as 8x8, but having run the tiny Bandais that are 8x8, I prefer a gearhead with controllable speed over a rocket sled 8x8.I've done Tomytec drives on my powered boxcar frame, my Whitcomb centercab kit, done a Bachmann doodlebug conversion and a Bachmann metroliner (both of those 8x8) and now this one. Until shipping prices went nuts out of Japan, these were as go-to as the Kato chassis. This one, at least, uses the 'R" version trucks with the low centered gear tower - the original drives with the end gear tower won't work.The reason almost ALL of these work is simple, you don't have to struggle with a cast-metal split-frame chassis. Frames are plastic, so you can cut, splice, file, whack or completely replace them with something else. Yet you still can have 8x8 end axle pickup and equalization through pickup wipers. And, Tomytec has removable sideframes so you can put anything you want on there with a little Goo.
Great thread! By profession, I'm kinda partial to PCC's. Someday I hope to take these Bachmann units and get them closer to the real ones:I doubt I will add the front trolley pole though.
never heard of them
Speaking of Tomy, what ever happened to the Tomy PCCs that were debuted at the Louisville NMRA Convention National Train Show? They were really nice. Charlie Vlk
For those Shapeway and other shells designed to fit on a Bachmann Brill chassis, there is a niffy workaround with this very simple and easy to print adapter off Thingiverse:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3505538to use the quite nice Kato 11-105 chassis. Bob
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