McKeen Motor Car Kits, Almost ready.

Cool stuff!

Looking forward to seeing everything that you get done.  Those trucks and drive will be very interesting.

You can get pretty high detail through Shapeways; entire trolley cars are available in O scale.

Count me in for one.  I always loved the McKeen cars.  A bit disappointed in the one at the Nevada Rwy Museum:  I would have liked to see a more "original" style of power plant rather than the little diesel that they put together.

Nonetheless,  I had one of the MTH cars on order and was really disappointed when they cancelled the production run.

McKeen cars are neat!

Paul Fischer

Yeah, with the premium frosted plastic, you can get up to .1 MM detail, but what I meant was that I don't want to print a 3D truck in that detail if it's sidewalls are just going to be used.  Also, at that detail, it costs about $5.50 per CM^3, so you can't make something too big.  I don't know exactly how I should make it.  I think I'll just make sidewalls that cover up an already custom truck with a 42" and 33" wheel pair.  

Haha, Original Powerplant, Well, none of them exist, and if one did, I would use it, but since they would have had to completely built one from scratch, from start to finish I think it would cost about half a million dollars, and why build an engine that didn't work in the first place?  I'm glad they had a simplified drive system, otherwise they probably wouldn't ever want to run it.  

When I set up my store in Shapeways I'll let all you all know, what ever variation you want it will be there, and if you don't see it, it's not much work for me to snap all the pieces together.  If that to you means you can order a 115' model, I'll do it, but don't expect that to be on my store for long haha. 

I am in for a body, and for the sideframes....floor, no problem...I can hack

that...sideframes, if correct, I WILL conjure some kind of a power truck up...

(I did not know there were that many body variations, but the Great Western

in Colorado got two in a deal where they bought part of another road, and

one of those would be on my wish list)  You have really done your homework.

Beyond your plan, I'll suggest that you make the higher level of detail available through Shapeways and let the market decide.  Given that higher end trucks in 2-rail for rolling stock can be well over $100 a pair, it might surprise you how many will be willing to pay for that detail.

That's not necessarily my problem, it's the fact that I am trying to make the model compatible to HO, which allows only half the detail of an O scale model.  I am going to have as much detail as possible, except for maybe rivet detail as that would be extremely hard to place on the curved surfaces like the nose and the rear end, but other than that, I can't print handgrabs, or door handles, so I think I may just leave that up to the person who buys the model.  Details on the trucks won't be as hard, but what I was debating was how I should make the truck, as it will have to be (kit bash-able) for someone to come along and power it without the entire truck falling apart.  

Any ideas on how to power a 3-D printed model?

The easiest way is to design it to take power trucks or a chassis from an existing locomotive that is available. I would just do sideframes that can mount on a comparable truck wheelbase. You may need to do make some compromises so this can fit, but that would be better than having to completely scratch build a mechanism. Frames can be shortened or lengthened to match.

Peter

A Williams GP7/9 power truck comes to about a 8' length, 42" wheels if I calculated it correctly. A bit oversize, but plentiful and solid performers. The frame has truck mounts that could be adapted to the side frames? With the vertical motor, height mat be an issue?

Steve

I think you should talk to Q-car about that.  If you would be willing to make accurate side frames and trucks, you might be able to get Quentin to make power trucks for the 2-rail community that will pay for such a level of accuracy.  I know that I would be in line for that right away.

Sure you could just plug a drive in under this that's available, but you know it'll be wrong and look odd.  Sure there's folks that won't care about that, but there are lot that will care.

The entire trolley bodies coming off Shapeways have the rivet detail; grabs and such would be applied by the modeler.  Like your modular plan on this as well - very reminiscent of the old ICC modular parts.  Please contact me: martinwb (at) Verizon (dot) net

Re power trucks....7" wheelbase, 33" wheels.

Unfortunately, I think O3R will require compromise here and there on this issue.

However, for the O2R folks, I should think Northwest Shortline would have a couple options....Their Stanton drive or their Magic Carpet drive, both of which are in this link...

NWSL Link

It wasn't obvious in a quick scan of the available part numbers that there's a match to your requirements, but I do know that a call to Dave/Linda of NWSL will get you a friendly discussion of options.

In fact, I wonder if Dave has given some thought to coming up with an O3R version of either/both of these drive units.  IMHO, they'd be dandy for McKeen's, Doodlebugs, Interurbans, Streetcars, etc..

Just a thought...

KD

Good for you Madison! Thanks for taking on this project after all the expectations that MTH might finally produce a McKeen motor car and having them cancel, this is a breath of fresh air. I am looking forward to the results and in the meantime I will be scavenging for suitable trucks.

Eric Hofberg

TCA, LCCA 

  Glad to see someone is  undertaking this project.  Your planning, Madison, is sound.  Car sides and ends.  Floor and roof provided by the purchaser.  Side frames only for the trucks.

  Regarding the power truck,  if I were building it I think I'd put the power truck in the rear, using a regular 3-rail diesel power truck.  The unpowered front truck would be easy to fabricate with Madison's sideframes, the different sized wheels and a bar stock frame and a little extra weight in the front. Now someone tell me why that wouldn't work.

   Archer or Micro-Mark rivet decals would take care of the rivet problem, keeping the cost down and saving Madison a lot of work.

   Please keep us updated on your progress.

          Logan

But will it look like this? Wood and plastic; I got it for $30 (new) at a TCA meet. The builder had 2 or 3 of them. It runs (in forward). A bit over-O-scale, I'd think.

OK, I know that this is a cartoon compared to what you're doing. I like McKeens too. Keep at it.

Is there one available that would work fully under the floor?

Shaping the roof will be "entertaining".......

I've used the drawing program quite a bit, and I don't usually have problems, but I the fun part comes when you try to wrap a complex double curve around an oval (the back end of the car.) I may have to redraw that part of the car before it will work

As for the motor, I think it could still be done with the motor intruding into the floor, won't look as nice, but it could happen.  Floor to bottom of the roof is 5'10" in 1:1, so about 1.5" in height, that's about all the room you get if you have a protruding motor.  Otherwise, it could be done like the Ken Kidder McKeen Cars... 

Photo Courtesy of bslook1213 - Flickr. 

With a LOT more work, haha, I could design worm gears and axles and wheels, but I'm not sure if the plastic used would hold up to that kinda wear.  Does anyone know what the usual RPMs are of HO and O scale motors at 80% speed?

Hi Madison,

I love what you're trying to do with the 3d modeling and printing to get this car built. I'll offer some thoughts on the drive issue, but bear in mind I'm not an expert by any means.

As this drive will only need to power a single car, or single car plus trailer, I think you can get away with an underfloor drive or an above floor drive with a relatively small motor.  The key as you've noted is getting a power truck with the correct wheelbase. The wheel diameter won't drive the design so much as wheelsets with 33" wheels are easily sourced from NWSL or Protocraft and probably other sources as well.

For readily available underfloor power trucks, the obvious choices are the Stanton drive from NWSL or something from a traction source like Q-Car.  Of course the caveat is whether they are offered with the 7'-0" wheelbase.  This information isn't anything new - several people have mentioned these sources already.  

A possible alternative would be to take a look at the CLAG website for other possibilities.  It's a UK site with lots of engineering for drives including axle mounted and truck mounted options.  The site may provide some inspiration for a solution.

Now if you ultimately need to have a motor above the floor, you should be able to use a modern small can motor in a setup similar to the one you have pictured above. Ideally the motor would be positioned to be hidden as best as possible in the baggage area of the car, with a drop down transmission to the power truck underneath.  If you take a look at re-poweriing threads by Jay Criswell (Jay C here on OGR) you will see many excellent examples where he employs this method.  Some of them now even utilize quite small Faulhaber motors due to size constraints.  What's particularly useful to you with his method is the use of the individual gearboxes in the truck that can be spaced at whatever wheelbase you need.

And a third alternative is to take a look at the Hollywood Foundry site.  They have all kinds of products that combine aspects of the CLAG drives and Jay's drives in various formats.

I think that no matter which powering method you choose, you will have to pursue 3d printing the sideframes including a manner with which to attach them to the trucks.  

I hope this gives you some ideas and inspiration.  Keep up the good work!

Jim

While railroads repowered and retrucked McKeens various ways to keep them

on the road, I am not following the "33 inch" wheel discussion, because did not

original McKeens have different size wheels in that infamous front truck?  That

was one of my "stonewalls", as well as that truck's length, when I have thought'

about a scratch-build.

That's exactly it, we aren't going to power the front truck because of the complexity, but because I'm not going to build the motor drive assembly, I may have who ever does it (If I do have someone do it) do both ways, so that if you want more traction, you can get the rear powered truck.   

That makes good sense.....if that front truck is designed for and accepts two

different diameters of wheelsets, at least, for the early original versions before

all the modifications (such as that "Green Worm" on one of the Illinois roads".