Garden Railway Forum

Long time ago we had an open day at the club.
There were also folks with RC trucks, tanks and everything else.
We had fun shunting flat wagons to the ramp to load and unload tanks, bulldozers, etc.

The there was an idea: how about a rail tank or armoured train?

For a long time....nothing happened.
Then we came across plans of the German PZ201.

Meet the artillery vehicle of PZ201:



- weight between 40 and 50 kg
- enough power to pull a driving truck and me.
- RC functions: driving, turning the turret, lifting and lowering the barrel, horn, water pump giving the "gun" 5 to 6 metres range, underfloor light red or blue.
- turns heads everywhere

Very useful sometimes. If someone is standing on the tracks where he/she should not be, just aim and *splash*.

Brilliant..... my kind of fun!

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:47 am Brilliant..... my kind of fun!

Yes indeed
Well done.

Got any footage of it in action please?

tom_tom_go wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 12:19 pm Got any footage of it in action please?

Not too much. I have a short clip of it running right through the wooden mockup body I made to check the dimensions. That one was reduced to matchstick size quickly.

Taigatrommel is now finished so a proper "baptism" was necessary. The Jet of water is not too well visible in the photo:

V200 026 is now officially finished. Another project done.

Nothing shall get into the way.....


The railcar only needs the decals to be applied. Then it will also be finished.

Brilliant!

I am now waiting for the decals to arrive.

It is always fascinating to see what paint can do.
When fitting the 3d printed nuts they looked just like "something that had been stuck to the body". After painting they look like they had always been there.
Same to the hatches, handrails and other bits.
I guess that having only on colour adds to this effect.

Next thing on the list is my German class 216.
She runs well but the body needs care.
The previous owner had not taken care to fit the panels without gaps.
So before starting the details I need to take the whole thing off, get rid of the gaps and re-fit the panels.
As the 216 is only 1.35m over buffers, 30cm shorter than the Taigatrommel, she will be "easy" to move around in my small workshop.

I bought her from the UK.
She was driven by a Villiers motor (sometimed it worked) and a hydraulic gearbox (almost never worked).
After lots of cursing, stuck valves, even being soaked in hydraulics fluid several times I decided that the stuff must go.
I chucked the whole drivetrain into the bin and rebuilt her with four electric motors, a proper 4QD controller and a DIETZ Sound module.
As soon as a loco runs, building speed decreases. With other projects in the way I never got round to it.
Now is the time.

Now that's really unusual. Love it.

Looks great

You might be interested to know that the miniature railway supply co have a whole 5" gauge armoured train that has been looking for a new home for a while (i saw it when I went up to buy rail from them).

http://www.miniaturerailwaysupply.com/#top

Doesn´t seem to be there any more. I haven´t found it on the website.

Scrat wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:50 am

tom_tom_go wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 12:19 pm Got any footage of it in action please?

Not too much. I have a short clip of it running right through the wooden mockup body I made to check the dimensions. That one was reduced to matchstick size quickly.

Taigatrommel is now finished so a proper "baptism" was necessary. The Jet of water is not too well visible in the photo:

V200 026 is now officially finished. Another project done.

Nothing shall get into the way.....


The railcar only needs the decals to be applied. Then it will also be finished.

The armoured tank looks very impressive!

Could you possibly give us some information on what the red, green, black dome 'buttons' are along the track? My guess is some sort of signalling system?

Hi James,

this is my sort of interlocking/route setting.

Imagine you want to leave the station.
Push the green one for counterclockwise (usual running direction) or red for clockwise direction. All required points will be set to the required position.

These sets are duplicated at both ends of the respective track.

When approaching the station form any direction you see three black buttons. Top one is entry to track #1, bottom one for track #3.

so far, so good

As no other colour was available, track #3 has additional black buttons which set the point to the ash pit/steamup track (dead end).

The "magic" is hidden inside the interlocking building. This contains mainly a diode matrix and one bi-stable relay per point.
Simple, efficient and robust.

As soon as the point blades start moving, the point indicator is switched off. After reaching the new position, the indicator is switched on again. So a point that has not reached a valid position is easily noticed by the driver.

All buttons conform to IP67 requirements.

As promised:

Some pics of my "steel turtle" after the decals have been applied.

It looks even bigger in the b/w pics.













Another project done.

Those decals finish it off quite well. Did you make them yourself, or are they a custom job? Also nice to see such a well-organised workshop.

There´s a man with a small business making those.
You can have anything you like.
For my wine barrel wagon I even got georgian script.
Fun to have all the wagons have my village in the filed "home station".