Garden Railway Forum

A number of years ago I started scratchbuilding an O&K MD1 following the Saltford Models plans. It's a tiny little thing so I was never going to motorise this iteration, but it's been sat waiting for a free rolling chasis for years now... I got a 3D printed last year, so 10 minutes on TinkerCad and 20 minutes of printing now means it's finished It's free rolling so I'll use it for either double heading or top and tailing trains at the moment, but I do have plans for a small motorised wagon at some point.

That looks nice Jack.
Obviously it is small but I'd have though you could squeeze something like an N20 gearmotor in there?

90733 wrote: Fri Jan 31, 2025 10:44 am I do have plans for a small motorised wagon at some point.

Neat work on the model.

Powering these little takkers is always a challenge. An N20 gearmotor was also my thought.

Space for batteries is the bigger problem and might require a battery wagon. However an RCR123A rechargeable 3.7V Li cell is only 34mm long x 16mm dia. and you might be able to squeeze in a Micron Mr601a Rx as well.

Graeme

Would it be possible to insert a battery into the drivers body from the bottom ?

hoppy504 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 1:29 pm Would it be possible to insert a battery into the drivers body from the bottom ?

That's exactly what I had to do with my 'Spooner's Boat' model. The seated driver was drilled from the bottom to hold an AAA battery with a brass strip alongside it, this becomes the full circuit when the head is attached with a brass tube around his neck acting as a switch...

Unfortunately not powerful enough to include RC.

Peter Butler wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 2:44 pm

hoppy504 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 1:29 pm Would it be possible to insert a battery into the drivers body from the bottom ?

That's exactly what I had to do with my 'Spooner's Boat' model. The seated driver was drilled from the bottom to hold an AAA battery with a brass strip alongside it, this becomes the full circuit when the head is attached with a brass tube around his neck acting as a switch.

Unfortunately not powerful enough to include RC.

Ingenious!

Unreal.

Thanks everyone!
In this day and age it’s probably very easy to motorise, but this one has a solid floor with lots of weights glued inside the bonnet, so drilling it all out later in the build would have been a absolute faff! Getting a battery in a figure is some going, impressive stuff.