Marklin Tinplate Steeple Cab

Very nice. Great idea!

This is the USA Trains R22-115 G Scale motor block.  It contains a horizontal DC can motor with a shaft out each end, gear drive to each axle.

Both the top and the bottom of the motor have easily removed cover plates to gain access.  Also, the screws that hold the covers on can be used to mount the motor to a truck or frame, or attach the roller pickups to the bottom, the way I did on the Marklin.

I remove the center sliding pickups, don't need them for 3-rail.  I also remove the contact pins that you see on one end, replacing them with wire leads.  Two are for the two motor leads, and the other two are track contact through the wheels, they can be combined for track ground.  Since the housing is plastic, you will not ground through the motor housing.  The motor has internal "swipes", thin springs that rub along the axles to create a ground; two of the end pins come connected to these swipes, and you can use that as your ground.

Notice that there is extra length on the axles:  Perfect for widening to Standard Gauge, either using the same wheels or substituting larger ones.  I usually end up using larger ones to give it a little more ground clearance.

Then all you need is a center third rail pickup, and a bridge rectifier between that and the motor leads.  If what you are building has a second (idler) truck - like the front truck on my rail bus for example - it is easier to put the pickup roller assembly in that other truck and wire it back to the motor through the cab.  If the motor block is your only truck, you have to get creative.  

To accomodate the DC motor, a simple bridge rectifier is one solution: but I often use a Williams reversing board, a small circuit board that sells for around $35, to give me smooth sequential forward-neutral-reverse-neutral.  The board also contains a bridge rectifier, so it serves that function as well.

This motor is about 4" long.  It is quite powerful and runs very strong, it is designed to pull some big G Scale trains.  

There is also a slightly smaller version, the USA Trains R22-12:

Although the 12 has a smaller motor, it has one advantage over the 115: the can motor does not rise above the black housing on top, so the block can be more easily attached to the bottom of whatever it is that you are building.

These motors can usually be found on eBay in the G Scale section, I search for "motors". I get the Williams reversing boards from Train World, I am sure they are available elsewhere.

david

Nice conversion. I have a model of each of those Steeple Cabs that Marklin made in the MAXI line...some four or five, I believe.

nicely done.

Allan, what is the difference between all those steeple cabs?  Are they different road names, or are there actually different model steeple cabs?  A somewhat longer one would be nice.

david

Marklin made only one type of this steeple cab in the Maxi range; but they made them in 3 colors: green, red and blue/white. The blue/white can be seeing here running with the pantograph against the catenary:

Regards

Fred

Nice video clip Fred, thanks!  And nice set!  The little steeple cab goes well with the 4-wheel Maxi passenger coaches.

david

Essentially just a color difference, but one model, at least, also displays a higher-level of detailing.

Thanks Allan.  As is apparent from Fred's blue and white engine, just the different color scheme makes it quite a different beast.

david

It turns out I didn't need to, Steve.  I thought that was going to be a problem too, but the wheels that I use - usually standard gauge pilot wheels - press on the larger diameter part of the axle and gauge out to 2-1/8" just fine, without using the turned-down tips of the axles.  I've been running several of these for some time now and no wheel wobble.  I suppose if the wheels you are using are thinner, it would become an issue.  But the SG die-cast pilot wheels are thick enough at the hub that they work as-is.

did you get one of these motors to play around with?  What are you putting it in?

david

Steve, here are a few more photos of how I use the USATrains motor block.

This is a Lionel #17 caboose I converted into a trolley.

Again I used standard gauge pilot wheels, this time the solid rather than spoked:

- these wheels are a larger diameter than the ones that come on the motor block, which provides a little more clearance between the belly of the motor and the center rail.

- The center hole in these wheels is the right diameter to press securely on the axle.

- the wheels are thick enough at the hub  to press on the larger diameter part of the axle. I have never had any problem with slippage or wobbling.  About half of the thickness of the wheel is pressed on the larger diameter part of the axle.

- When the tip of the axle is flush with the outside of the wheel, the wheels are pretty much gauged at 2-1/8" for standard gauge (might need a little fine tuning from there).  

Obviously, the motor block has a longer wheelbase than the old Lionel truck, so it doesn't look quite right.  I have yet to find a better solution. So I would admit that at this point there is an aesthetic consideration using this motor for SG which I am not quite entirely happy with.

On this trolley I made from an old beat-up friction-motor toy, I left the truck off the motor, and used a McCoy truck on the front.  Not sure if it looks much better than the caboose trolley..

Aesthetic considerations aside, in all the standard gauge applications for which I have used this motor, the performance can't be argued with; it runs and pulls like crazy.

david

Should work.  When you have a few minutes, just put a wheel puller on them and ease them out a little at a time, on each side of the motor, until they gauge on a piece of standard gauge track.  

david