Making Vehicles Move

[Midnight]

I have developed a system to make vehicles move. What you would do is, put track beneath your roads. If you have multiple lanes, put track right beside each other. Then make slits through your base and one lane of your road. The slit would have to stay right in the middle of the lane. Then, take, say... a toothpick or some other round object that will fit through the slit. Then attach a car to the top of the toothpick. Make sure, that it is attached at the bottom. Then put the other end in a train car, which will go under the road. Then let the train run and your car moves.
There are a few problems with this, specifically, tight turns and derailment. I'm not sure if this is the first time anyone has said this but, hey...

~Midnight

 

[Torpedo]

I'm afraid you aren't the first to think of that. It was done decades ago, although I don't think they used toothpicks.

 

[Ray Marinaccio]

I saw an O gauge layout at Oglby park WV. that used a similar system to pilot a riverboat along a river. They used magnets instead of the slot and tooth pick (to keep the water in the river).

 

[MadHatter]

What they (Faller I think) do is use a magnetic system. The system that I saw used HO gauge track and another train, with magnets attached to the roof, it ran under wherever roads were- even at railway crossings- etc. of course you can get digital ones with indicator lights lights on and of etc, these days. So...... if you have any unused trains just modify them, as this will cut the cost dramatically, and just buy their vehicles.

 

[nachoman]

i think you are better off using a loop of string that tows around the cars. The string can be underneath the street and looped around pulleys. This would be much the same as a cable car.

I've thought about other forms of animation on a layout. Somehow, I always ran into the same problem with cars - they look more realistic to me standing still. Animated cars would always be going in loops, and their actions would not reem real. And animated cars would look weird without animated people. For now, I'll just stick to making the trains move.

kevin

 

[Russ Bellinis]

I think to make the cars look real, only about 25% of the roadway can be visible, unless the layout is around the walls point to point and there is room to turn the cars around at each end. Even so, the cars need to disappear before they turn around and then not reappear until after they are going the other way. One way to get around the tight radius situation is to use Kaddee or other brands of trucks only kind of like a logging disconnect car rather than using cars to power the cars and trucks on the layout. Also you would need the shortest, smallest locomotivces possible to pull the trucks around. If you got hold of a bunch of old Athearn Little Hustlers, they would be ideal for pulling the cars and trucks around your roads.