Garden Railway Forum

I hope many of you know of the Hartland Mack loco series. These cheap little locos had a great motor block for scratchbuilding or for just bashing the body into something else. Unfortunately I believe they are no longer available.
I had previously used these motor blocks to produce 3 different locos, shown here with an unchanged Mack.
Years ago I inherited one from a mate who had turned it into a Ute by adding a tray to the back.
He had added a battery and a simple forward/off/reverse switch. I did not use it much.

Recently another mate died and before-hand he returned some remote control stuff I had built for him years ago. So as a ‘memorial’ to both these mates,’memories I put Geof’s RC and sound into Bryan’s Ute. It will mainly run on my indoor line, so I purposely made the sound quite soft.
The RC is my usual model aircraft 2.4GHz stuff with a picaxe speed controller and sound. The electronics went in the ute’s tray and I covered it with various loads, mainly made from balsa. The small LiPo battery is underneath behind the motor block as is the speaker.

and a low resolution video on my inside line.

A great looking little loco, Greg, and a fine tribute to Bryan and Geof. Sounds good, too!

Rik

That's a great little loco Greg, looks good and handles the curves and inclines so well.