I recently purchased a second hand MS Casting railcar kit but would like advice on a suitable chassis. It looks rather like a single deck bus. I have fitted a Parkside coach bogie to a pivot bolt under the bonnet and originally intended fitting a Chinese Caramel chassis under the body but I can not think of a way to mount it so that it pivots. Any ideas would be welcome.
An alternative would be to fit a Bo-Bo chassis and I would welcome advice on a suitable one. The pivots need to be at least 50 mm apart so that the front bogie is under the bonnet and the rear one is mid way along the body. The front of the chassis really needs to fit inside the bonnet which is only 8 mm wide internally and 12 mm wide externally. I have tried a Tomytek but it is a little short and it will not fit inside the bonnet without major surgery which would require the removal of the front pick ups
Help!!
Tony Clarke
From memory the kit was designed to have a Farish motor bogie used as a power unit, one of the early DMU / HST chassis that has a power bogie pivoting in a housing and a non-powered bogie at the other end.
The 'modern' HST / DMU chassis have a centrally mounted motor that drives both bogies, so whilst the result is more powerfu (8 wheel against 4 wheel drive) I suspect that it will not fit under the bonnet of the MS railcar without some fairly drastic surgery to the chassis block, even if it could be cut down that far.
I think that your main problem with any Bo-Bo chassis will be getting the drive to the front end and cutting the chassis block down to fit the 8 mm space available. That leads us back to using a power bogie at the back end and a free-wheeling bogie under the front. You could still use a Bo-Bo chassis to do this but take off the front bogie - and here it would help if it was a shorter chassis from a locomotive (Farish class 20 size?) or one of the Japenese chassis that is only powered on the one end - they are surprisingly easy to lengthen. Alternatively you could try to source a Farish motor bogie (they are a bit hard to get now), try the Avalon-Line notor bogie, a chassis from N-Drive, or the Meridian Models MPD18 unit.
Hope that helps.
Thank you for the information. That gives me a start
Tony
Or you could forget the front bogie and fit a kato 4w under the body
Quote from: Alan Feldon on October 07, 2012, 07:43
Or you could forget the front bogie and fit a kato 4w under the body
Considering the length of the body (4" if I recall correctly from the built one that I saw) I'm not sure that would work unless the body was shortened to suit.
Perhaps i am at cross purposes Julian.The only MS railcar that I was aware of was based on the pig weismar one and is 2.25" long.
Did they make a longer one?
The Tomytek TM02, TM03 and TM04 chassis (12 or 15m long) are smooth running, but only drive at one end. They are very amenable to having the non-driven bogie removed and the chassis (which is basically a soft plastic channel) hacked about. I've done this to revive some of my 3mm scale Irish railcars which originally had a Minitrix dock tank upfront powering things. With the minitrix chassis de-motored and plenty of weight, they run very smoothly, especially as I was able to connect the pick-ups from the Trix chassis to the Tomytek motor. With the MS models body, the weight should not be a problem!
Charlie Insley
Quote from: Alan Feldon on October 07, 2012, 17:55
Perhaps i am at cross purposes Julian.The only MS railcar that I was aware of was based on the pig weismar one and is 2.25" long.
Did they make a longer one?
Alan, MS Models made two dfferent railcar kits, the Wismar inspired 4w and also one inspired by Coumty Donegal No.7. It is this latter kit that I think we are discussing here, and to power it, it really needs something like the GF HST motor bogie.
As Charlie has pointed out, the Tomytec chassis may offer the best solution available these days, as it is possible to dispense with the non driven bogie, Also it may be possible to do the same with a Likelike SW9 chassis.
Brian had a Farish motor bogie on Saturday...
I think as Julien mentioned the
Thanks Garry we live and learn.I knew MS had made castings for the doors of a donegal type railcar but never knew they had actually made the whole railcar.
Hi Alan,
If you still have early copies of 009 News, a drawing of it often appeared in the Parkside Dundas ad. Side view looks very much like County Donegal numbers 7 & 8 but it has a bogie under the engine.
I've just unearthed a photo I took of one that was in 009 Sales as long ago as 1998 on a very 1st generation digi camera. Here 'tis:
(https://forum.009society.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi224.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fdd239%2FMick6126%2Frailbus1.jpg&hash=93e1b1552671a953a8d911bf9df6487d590c840e)
And just for comparison, here is the smaller MS Railcar which was obviously built by the same person as the larger one.
(https://forum.009society.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi224.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fdd239%2FMick6126%2Frailbus2.jpg&hash=c9e40039cedd6cf892057740fbbf9c6433930d31)
Mick
Thank you for all the ideas. The model is the 4" long one. I did think about the Tomytek chassis but was reluctant to cut the front bogie off as I will then only have pick up on 4 wheels instead of 8. There is so much weight that it will probably work.
I apologise for the delay in replying to all the helpful comments but I have been away for a few days.
Tony Clarke
Thanks Mick I must confess to not having seen one in the "flesh" before.
Unfortunately all my 009 news from issue 1 had to be dumped when i emigrated.
Ah I remember seeing that first one at a show, probably early 80's ? It was on display as a forthcoming model on a stall at an exhibition, would it have been Roxy mouldings ?
Never saw it again after and did not realize it was made by the same people who made the Wismar inspired one. I have one complete one of these, built without the bonnets on a Fleishman track cleaner chassis and another incomplete one that I was going to make duplicate copies of - but of course I never got around to it....
I have however now done some 3-d printed copies - seeing this inspired me to finish them off, I started over a year ago. Still got to do underframes for them but if your happy to make your own, the bodies are here http://www.shapeways.com/shops/tebee?sort=newest§ion=OO9%28British%29
Tom
Last year I built one on a Kato 4w chassis. To hide the chassis the floor internally is just below the bottom of the windows!
Malcolm
https://picasaweb.google.com/112904466287746079405/MSModelsShortRailbus# (https://picasaweb.google.com/112904466287746079405/MSModelsShortRailbus#)
Thank you to all the members who replied. I have now got the kit working by cutting the front unpowered bogie off the front of a Tomytek TM03 chassis and putting the powered bogie under the main body of the railcar. I put a Parkside coach bogie under the bonnet.
Tony Clarke