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hey all. I'm not so familiar with this site as I am not on here so often, but I have been working on something for the past 6 months I would like to share. I got lucky one day in fall of 2016, and found the original 12 car 0 Series Shinkansen set on eBay. I bought it, and immediately found that the original motors drew too much amperage. 6 cars out of the 12 were powered. after brainstorming for a couple weeks, instead of solving this with a different power pack/transformer, I wanted to go the hard route and came up with the idea of traction motors - if it works on the real thing, why not in HO scale? There are phone vibrator motors that I could use that would fit between the axles perfectly the result of my endeavors is shown in this youtube video: (test car in vid is type 21, I don't have the other cars ready yet) I have a long way to go to get the full train running, but longer I wait to see it on the rails, the more focused I am to get it done. the train set, when finished, will have working head/tail lights, bluetooth control, and various other devices built in to keep the train running. This is all powered with an Arduino Micro.

i recently picked up 1/2 of a TOMIX 92139 JR Electrical Inspection Cars Series 193 2-car set; the training(?) car (the one with 2 pantographs). Though it's not prototypical, I want to use it for an express locomotive for a 2 or 3 car container consist. The piece came with both the track cleaning truck and the regular truck. my 1st problem was I could not get it to move on the track as the wheels had no traction (motor works). I checked the orientation of both installed trucks and they are turning the same direction. I think I finally fixed that problem by adding traction tires. At least it moves now. But, it will only move in 1 direction, backward. even if using the direction toggle on the power pack. it only moves backward with the direction switch in either position. Is this trailing chassis only set up to move in reverse (relative to the lead chassis)? I have not taken the motor case apart yet to check the drive train.