Ghost puller


H

Hos

New Member
Hello!

I'd like to build a nice boxcar Puller. Here's what I'm thinking

20k 130size ball bearing slot car motor (.2 amp max, 250 gr/cm)

12T for motor and 23T for double shaft (about 2x mechanical advantage and nearly same rpm as my Kato hm5 locomotives. Almost 500gr/cm of torque at the yolk!!)

Front/rear Ahern yolk driven trucks (3 axle)

Custom made truck mounts so they can turn

Double flywheels if I can figure that out with the drive shafts

As many weights as I can add.

Maybe dcc or sound module.

That's the gist of what I am thinking. I'll use this car behind my DRG locos, my smaller locos and others that just don't have enough umph. If there's other stuff that I'm missing let me know. And I did see the ghost car kit, but I like this project and getting it to work will be awesome. Plus, it will have way more torque than a regular train motor as far as I know.
 
Some company made a freight truck (bettendorf I believe) that had power transfer gears in it, just for that reason mid train power. Can't remember who it was. NWSL? Seems like I saw them advertised for a while (like a year) and then they vanished. Another company came up with something similar but the reason was to transfer power to/from flywheels in the cars and make them have more inertia.

You said DRG, so is this Denver Rio Grande narrow gauge, or a German Imperial DRG class of loco?

Will three axle trucks under a box car be very ghosty?
 
That's what I was thinking. A 2 axle would be better. And it would increase the contact pressure between the rail and wheel. Plus, I bet I could get 9sqin of lead in the box, so that'd be 3.69lbs of additional weight - unless I add a dcc with speaker if its just too heavy for the trucks and to speed match.

I saw some of those kits. Including that one guy the makes the kits. They all seem pretty light duty and like a little booster. The one I want to build might could pull 30oz!

Drg as in epoch II German trains. I have 3 and they're 2 liliputs and a rivarossi BR61. The 2 liliput with tenders have the drive trane in the tender, so not a lot of room for adding weights or different motors, thus not much traction. The first car behind them would be my torque-y ghost car.
 

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Interesting. From the diagram it looks, tall. No issues fitting that inside the body shell?

is the 12:23 gear ratio significant? Does that make this motor match the Liliput speed profile?
 
Well, I ordered a metal body box car for this project. It's not here yet, but when it is, I'll know for sure

The motor is flat sided and is actually smaller than a typical 130 can. Its 15mm, which i will put as low as I can while still having clearance for the shaft and 23t gear. I can nix the flywheels and use regular dogbone shafts if needed to keep it low. And from where/how this car operates, it should be smoothed out by the resistance on the front end. And on top of all that the the motor is actually spinning at twice the speed per train speed as the regular motor does which should make it smoother without a flywheel.

As for the gear ratio, its roughly 2:1 which puts the output shaft to the trucks at the same speed as a stock motor output - about 11.5k rpm. But with the motor itself spinning twice the speed should give more torque to the truck drive gears than a slow spinning direct drive stock motor. I'm expecting/hoping for a tie to tie crawler that can pull 200 cars!
 
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I certainly hope so. I also got a couple 86ft hi cube box cars. I could line up 4 motors, have a dcc, and put speakers in that big thing!

With the dcc being able to hold 2 amp, I could actually get fun with the drive design. I could go multiple motors, maybe a higher gear ratio with faster motors, or something else? Anyone have a suggestion??
 
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