Now that my large scale steam locomotive is running nicely in the backyard garden railroad (although I have not had a chance to run it much), I started upgrading my large scale trolley this past week.
I had to order a few different parts for this project but our USPS delivery service is abysmally slow so this little project is going very slowly while I impatiently wait on parts to arrive. That being said, I've still made some headway the past few days.
Just as I did previously with the steam locomotive, I started by disassembling and stripping down the trolley. I pulled out all the wiring, removed the motor block and started coming up with a new wiring plan.
I have a new motor block that runs much more smoothly than the stock motor block so that was a definite upgrade. The issue was that I needed to figure out how to mount this new motor block to the trolley since it was not made for this particular train. I needed to come up with some sort of adaptation.
Anyway, the first step was to disassemble the trolley and then figure out where I would put the new electronics, the speaker, the charging jack, the power switch, and the battery.
For a little while, I was totally stumped on how to mount the motor block to the trolley. I came up with a few ideas, did some research to see what other people have done in the past but then came up with my own plan.
Others had mentioned simply gluing the motor block to the trolley but I wasn't too fond of that idea. I didn't think it would work well for me for various reasons that are unnecessary to mention here. I wanted to find a way to screw this new motor block to the trolley.
I came up with a plan for a way to screw wood blocks to each side of the motor block and then using these wood blocks to secure the motor block to four stud mounts previously used on the bottom side of the trolley for a slightly different purpose. The biggest obstacle to overcome was to figure out how to mount these two wood blocks to the sides of the motor block.
Although there was very little room for screwing these wood blocks to the plastic housing of the motor block (see photo below), I managed to thread enough screw threads into the plastic housing to secure the wood blocks. I had to grind down #6 screws to the exact length needed in order to avoid bottoming out at the aluminum shell of the motor that is inside this plastic housing. Actually, I had to grind down all the screws needed for mounting this motor block.
In the end, I was successful in mounting this motor block. Oh yeah... looking at this photo reminded me that I had to put the motor block on spacers because the motor is protruding about an eighth of an inch outside the plastic housing. This meant that the motor block wouldn't sit flatly on the trolley body. I had to glue two 3/16th inch wood spacers to the trolley where I could mount the motor block.
After successfully and securely mounting the new motor block to the trolley, I then found a way to install the old side frames. These old side frames aren't the exact right size for this new motor block but most people won't notice that. I had to adapt them slightly but that was fairly easy to do.
I also built a speaker enclosure and then mounted it to the underside of the roof of the trolley. I plan to mount the battery and the electronics underneath the roof too (that's the plan anyway). I know how I'm going to mount the electronics but I'm still unsure of how to mount the battery. I'll figure something out though.
I still have a few other things I can do while I wait for parts to arrive so I'll continue to keep busy with this project whenever I have a little time.
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