I have motorised several of the smaller, lengthwise, Atlas trams.
A couple of shots but more on
https://dorsetrailwaymodelling.blogspot.com/ (https://dorsetrailwaymodelling.blogspot.com/)
Nice job.
The trick with the steam tram is making the body sit low enough to the rails, by cutting the lower part of the boiler away, and also adding as much weight as posiable.
I have seen many where the body is way too high!
I have a whole train of the coaches all fitted with bogies made from Egger two wheel bogies glued together in pairs to make 4 wheel bogies.
With the loco I made a new footplate out of thick card. I also found the chimney was too high so I shortened it and countercunk the sparkarrestor into the roof.
It looks like an easy conversion, but to get it right takes a lot of work.
Brian Meldon
I made a complete housing for the motor bogie from plasticard then cut the boiler to fit using the chimney as a guide to how it sat correctly.
Fiddly but once the original footplate was discarded the conversion was fairly easy. The new mech housing just clips in.
Unfortunately the carriage which comes with the tram loco is far too long for any of my layouts
I haven't started mine yet, but the silver bars on mine are quite distorted and ill have to be replaced with something a bi more solid. Probably brass.
On mine I first discarded the metal footplate as I couldn't cut this at all .So I made a new one out of lead which gave me the weight I wanted and was easy to cut out the shape of the Kato chassis .Then everything was stuck to the new footplate .As Brian says material has to be taken off the bottom of the boiler (which can also have lead added ) and it is important that the chimney be lowered .
I have recently swapped a new Kato for the previous version and it runs a dream .
Quote from: Stephen Rainsbury on April 06, 2020, 13:53
I haven't started mine yet, but the silver bars on mine are quite distorted and ill have to be replaced with something a bi more solid. Probably brass.
I replaced all plastic the silver bars with steel wire and the gold pipework on the boiler with brass wire.
Yours sounds interesting, Brian, all the ones you see on Ebay are ones where they've just stuck the chassis under an unmodified body. It may be useful for everyone else if you could show them a photo of the conversion.
Quote from: Hobby on April 07, 2020, 11:31
Yours sounds interesting, Brian, all the ones you see on Ebay are ones where they've just stuck the chassis under an unmodified body. It may be useful for everyone else if you could show them a photo of the conversion.
Ok then, not that it looks that different to anyone else's.
The first photo is a side view. Note that the body is as low to the ground as possible and the handrails are made of wire.
Next is the underside showing the added lead. The parts in the centre at each end are glued to the Kato chassis, the ones round the edge are glued to the new floor.
Then the counter sunk chimney hole in the roof.
The last photo shows the new plasticard floor that the chassis clips into. It also carries the boiler the fittings and the crew. The lead strips around the chassis are glued to the underside of the new floor. The blocks supporting the boiler at each corner are also lead, painted black. The chimney has a threaded stud inserted that holds the boiler/footplate and chassis into the body.
That's a really nice conversion Brian, did you do the coach too?
Quote from: Stephen Rainsbury on April 07, 2020, 23:15
That's a really nice conversion Brian, did you do the coach too?
Thanks Stephen.
Yes, I have a train of five coaches, but I can only run three as with the metal floors they are a bit heavy for some of my locos.
As with the loco they are as low as posiable, the coach roofs line up with the loco roof.
The bogies are old Egger two wheel bogies cut down and glued back to back to make a four wheel bogie. The couplings are mounted on extensions made of strips of tin. I re-used the original bogie mounting points and even the screws.
There are two sections of plastic strut either side of the bogie mounts to keep the bogies at the correct height so the top surface of the bogies just clears the side frames on the coach.
Thanks, that looks really nice, and I was about to order another one when it struck me that they would all be number 31!
Did you use the Egger bogies because you already had them or are they better than some of the others like the Dundas ones?
Quote from: Stephen Rainsbury on April 09, 2020, 18:04
Thanks, that looks really nice, and I was about to order another one when it struck me that they would all be number 31!
Did you use the Egger bogies because you already had them or are they better than some of the others like the Dundas ones?
Yes, all the coaches do all have the same number, but it would be quite easy to print a new number on a colour printer and stick it over the original number.
I have a great many of the Egger two-wheel bogies, these were all removed from the Egger coaches that were extended to about twice their length for use on Jack Carter's two exhibition layouts Meanderbahn and Pitztalbahn in the early 1980's. There are about 20 of these and we used Roco log bolster as bogies as they run a lot better than the Egger bogies made into four-wheel bogies. So yes, I used them because I had them. I guess if I was to choose bogies for these coaches it would be the Liliput four-wheel bogies, but these are quite expensive and hard to find.
I picked up one of those coaches recently (at Narrow Gauge North) as it seemed like a good idea.