Motor bogies

[Seb_N&BLR]

Hi folks

As part of my ongoing railcar scratchbuild project I’m needing advice on an appropriate powered motor bogie. I was looking at the Swift Sixteen offering which is certainly solidly designed but slightly pricey at £110+p/p and available with 13:1 or 25:1 gear ratios which I’m concerned might be a bit fast.

Does anyone have experience of the S16 bogie or have any other recommendations I could look at please? Something designed for slow running would suit my line as it is end-to-end rather than a continuous loop and rolling stock is manually-controlled so the operator needs to be able to keep up!

Thanks, Seb

[Preseli Chris]

I will be following this thread as I am looking to up grade my motor bogie on my railbus .

[GTB]

As part of my ongoing railcar scratchbuild project I’m needing advice on an appropriate powered motor bogie.

I design and build my own electric mechanisms, so no experience of the Swift Sixteen rtr and kit power bogies.

Assuming you are modelling in SM32, a look at the data on the Swift Sixteen website and a quick calculation suggests that using the 24mm dia. wheel option, 25:1 gear option and fitting a 12V battery, an SM32 model will travel at a max. scale speed around 20 scale mph.

Actual speed will be approx. 1 mph (1.6kmph) which is a slow walk. A manual speed control can be used to reduce that speed further and will reduce noise as well.

Other electric mechanism suppliers I'm aware of are IP Engineering at the cheap and cheerful end of the market and Essel which are well made, but not cheap. There are others, as some of the kit manufacturers sell their mechanisms separately.

Regards,
Graeme

[Phil.P]

Following on from the above..
If you want to run a little slower, and are using (say) a 12V motor, if battery, you don't have to fit 12V worth of batteries.

Phil.P

[Seb_N&BLR]

Thank you for the advice, I will look at the Essel option and also consider running the S16 (which looks rather effective with the cosmetic bogie frames added) with maybe 6-8V supply to reduce the operating speed.

Edit: the Essel bogie looks useful for future projects but the side rods will look out of place and be difficult to conceal on my current build. Rather frustratingly the S16 seems to be currently unavailable with 25:1 gearing; the 13:1 gearing will definitely be too fast. I’m sure it was available when I originally looked.