A Study in SG Motor Conversions

Some real creative people out there solving problems with existing equipment. Love it.

Steve

Arno, the motors in your first three pictures are from a Lionel 2353  Santa Fe F3:  here it is in its native environment:

They are very strong, quite heavy, motors with both axles gear driven.  In any pair, one motor has the center rail roller pickups and the other one doesn't.  In the first photo of Arno's post, you can see the laminations of the motor up above the truck.

It's hard to tell from the photos, but it seems that the common way of making the conversion is to pull off the O Gauge wheels, press on a brass bushing with the correct inside diameter, then press a short axle extension stub into the bushing, and then press the Standard Gauge wheel onto the axle extension.  You can't see the axle extension of course, but I'm guessing that's what's there?  It would be a very short (about 7/16"?) stub axle on each side? So it would pretty much disappear into the bushing and the SG wheel.

In Arno's third picture from the top, it looks like they made the brass bushings out of knurled brass transformer post nuts?

That's right. In fact, the 1st 4 pictures have transformer nuts as spacers. Some of them have the knurling removed. They were all done by the same person. It turns out, the transformer nut is the perfect spacer for the longer axle.

Thanks for the identification of the F-3 motor.

More to come.

ARNO

How about some Lionel Gang car motors...

More to come....

ARNO

This is a MPC/Fundimensions 8030-100 Power truck used in Geeps & U-Boats.

This is a 622 power truck.

Thanks Rob.

This is a #41 chassis.

This one is also is a MPC/Fundimensions 8030-100 type power truck.

This is a Marx motor.

This is a 243-100 motor.

Arno and Rob, this is extremely helpful.  I suppose if you were good at this kind of thing you'd just take any motor and convert it:  but for the rest of us, it really gives a head start to know what motor to look for, and to be able to see how someone else has figured out how to make it work.  It skips a lot of trial and error.

Thank you!

How about some 6-wheel Lionel motors which are converted for 4-wheel SG.

 Here is one with the flanges removed from the O-gauge wheels since it has smaller running wheels. Also O-gauge wheels for the SG ones.

One of my favorites.... so, you need a 6-wheel SG loco... well, use 1-1/2 motors to make it work! It takes all kinds.

More motors on the way... keep watching.

ARNO

OK, let's go back in time a little.... These are not really conversions, but they are neat enough on their own. Back in the teens and twenties, people did what they could to power their creations. Here are a few:

And here is my beloved loco I named Brutus, he sports an early clock type motor and gears.

Speaking of gears, they are a pretty popular way of transferring the power... some people took it to the extreme:

More motors coming soon...

ARNO

As I review this thread, I'm getting a few ideas for re-motoring my Std Gauge GG1!

Thanks, guys!

Also, I can't help but think that this is really just the toy train version of hot-rod or rest-o-mod in the car hobby.  Having a dad who has been a hotrod guy his entire life, I guess I'm "wired" to appreciate the creativity and ingenuity of this type of modification/restoration.

Good stuff!

Rob,

Actually the spacing on the 6-wheel motor from the 675 lines up with the wheels on the Daniel's GG-1. Maybe ADCX Rob (or someone else) can tell me what other locos this motor came in as I would love to get a few and revamp some DLR GG-1's I have. Also, don't those motors come in Magna-Traction? That would be an added bonus for the GG-1.

Here is a 6-wheel motor, now I'm not sure where it came from, but it is the same axle spacing as a 675 (I checked).

Here is the same motor in comparison to the DRL GG-1 truck with the McCoy motor. Bingo. A little work would need to be done on the frame of the GG-1, but i think it might be an answer to the problem.

Let's see what you come up with Rob.

ARNO

The 675 and 2025 are the same motors 1947-1950, then the MagneTraction 2035 used an aluminum plate motor construction. Motors with this spacing and basic drive mechanism are voluminous after 1949 and include 2035, 2025('52 version), 2046, 2056, 646, 2055, 2065, 665, 685. After 1970 they became even more prolific - 8206, 8603, and then MagneTraction started up again in 1976 with the 8600, 8702, 8801, 8900, 8006, 8101, 8210, 5484(TCA), 8610, and probably others I am missing.

This looks to be a motor from a 8206 or 8603 - what gives it away is the Nylon gears and lack of MagneTraction, pointing to 1972-1976.

Thanks Rob, you're the answer man I needed for this thread. Much appreciated.

ARNO

Arno,

That's a great collection of conversion motors! 

That said, it appears to me that several of your conversion motors would have great difficulty passing smoothly through Lionel/MTH switches without hard contact or derailment.  It appears to me that on some motors the unmodified gearing and/or old wheels would come into contact with the switch's guard rails and/or frog.  Have you noticed this problem?

Bob

Bob,

That's a hard one to answer. First, they are all different and have their own quirks. I have not had any trouble with any of the Lionel motors with wheel/flanges still intact. The sencond part of this equation, I don't use Lionel/MTH switches so I can not answer it fully. I think that would be a question for another thread.

ARNO

Arno thanks for sharing these pics, they are priceless!  Someone should do a book from your collection.  Great thread, thanks all for posting!

Now, how about some can motor conversions.

 This is the motor truck that is used in the steeplecab I ran on my Christmas layout. See it in action here:

https://ogrforum.com/t...ade-christmas-layout

It's a simple small can motor mounted parallel with traction tires. As you can see in the Christmas Layout video, it has no trouble pulling cars.

Sometimes ideas work better than the actual thing.

This was a motor used in something else, not sure what. I have yet to power it up and see if it works.

Simple can motor mounted perpendicular above the axle, chain drive to the other axle.

Same motor set-up, but it has a rubber band supporting the motor.

That covers some of the can motors, there are plenty more out there but they are all about the same.

ARNO

couldn't have said it better!

Well, I'm winding down the pictures of the motors. Here are some random motors.

 This is another motor from a 8206 or 8603. It is a good, smooth runner.

I couldn't forget about the Marx and Flyer guys.... we have some of those too.

 With a smoke unit (?) and a bunch of washers.

 Still more to come.

ARNO

OK, not quite a conversion, but an underfloor motor from the mid '30's for use with trolley cars. It was made by Icken and shows some real neat work.

Last, but certainly not least, this is one of my favorite motor conversions. It is a Lionel O-gauge motor mounted within some SG side frames. note the cutout for the middle wheel of the 6-wheel truck.

That concludes my look at SG motor conversions (for now). I hope you guys enjoyed looking at some of the creativity that has graced SG track. These are things that are usually not seen or given much though, but are super cool nonetheless.

When I get my trains out of storage, I will add to these with even more motors.

Thanks hojack for getting me started on this thread and everyone who has contributed, especially ADCX Rob for his Lionel motor identification.

ARNO

Arno,

You have a lot of great conversions in your collection with some more "professionally" done than others.  But do you know which of your O gauge motor conversions to Standard Gauge is the most powerful?  I think that would be important to know before one attempted any conversion.

Bob Nelson

Fascinating topic, Arno. Thanks for sharing.

Todd Wagner