HO Shorties?

[GDorsett]

Looking at some Plarail that Need4HighSpeed had at the GSMTS a few weeks ago, I noticed they are remarkably close to the general propertions of an HO-ish railcar and only slightly smaller than a WaMu chassis. Has anyone considered converting these into sort of an HO Shorty? Has this been done before? If you've tried, was it easy to do and how did you go about it? And finally, would I be better off buying just WaMu wheelsets and getting someone to print chassis?

Planning on getting a train only set so I can make an attempt at converting these.

[kvp]

A bit cheaper solution could be to get H0 bogies with wheels, cut them in half to make 2 single axle frames that could be screwed or glued onto the plarail cars, keeping the original couplers. The bigger problem would be power but there are nice single axle power units that could fit. The loading gauge might be a problem though.

[GDorsett]

And that was the second option, finding a way to attach single axles instead if an entire chassis.

And I do want to put on knuckles for function purposes. They'll be easier to assemble/break down trains with and they'll perform better when pushed than the stock Plarail couplings, although the stock ones would add an extra layout of whimsy...

For power, I figured I'd get a motour and a fly wheels and just use a worm gear/cog on the drive axle.

Edited November 23, 2018 by GDorsett

[Beaver]

I did do some thinking about this too but preferring a pair of very short wheelbase bogies (like N shorties) mounted on a 'skateboard' block to which the bodyshell would also be attached.

 

Probably using Black Beetles for power cars and the dummy version for unpowered. More pickups that way and perhaps smoother running, especially

at speed.

[GDorsett]

Black Beetles?

[marknewton]

Steam Era Models Black Beetle motor bogie:

 

http://steameramodels.com/bbeetle.htm

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[GDorsett]

oh, I could use those to have a self-powered boxcar to confuse people...

 

[marknewton]

I’ve got about a dozen of them under various models. They’re very good.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Need for High Speed]

Plarail vs HO scale. they are very similar in size. I swore I have seen a picture on some Japanese blog of an HO shortty made from a Plarail train I don't know If I will be able to dig it up again. Would be cool but what's the point when you already have the real models.

 

This is my family of Shinkansens I am missing only one member and that's the n scale Hayabusa. It's a tale of blue and green.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Need for High Speed

[GDorsett]

The point is novelty. You can't tell me it wouldn't be neat to have a Plarail set that runs on HO track.