I've made a lot of progress on completing my 'Streets tractor trailers. I have two sets: big and small - you'll see what I mean below.
All of my tractor trailers are built with the same overall drivetrain concept: the leading axle of the trailer is fixed to the trailer and powered by a big flywheel-equiped can motor - the biggest I can fit, directly geared. The second axle, if the trailer has one, is a "floater" - just fitted with a small frame attached to the trailer right behind the driven axle so it tracks and can turn from side to side right behind the lead axle. It supports no weight, only itself. The tractor has two fixed axles and if there is a third it is also a floater. Electrical pickup is through the three fixed axles' wheels and there is a center pickup under each of those three axles.
Below, my BIG set. These are all "big rigs" but the "BIG" here refers to big scale: 1/43 or a big, big truck truck in 1/48. I have two trailers - a box and a kind of covered hopper, and will eventually make a tanker when I find a good one to convert. I have four tractors: a '53 Mack B61 (New Ray), a blue Volvo cab-over with side skirts (Solido I think) and Volvo cab-over without skirts, and a Peterbilt (also no-name). Two of the tractors are shown with a floater third axle - the floaters will fit to any of the four, which will work with either of the trailers. All of these "big" trucks use wheels taken from the K-Line-by-Lionel shorty school bus: the biggest diameter wheels made for 'Streets. Four is enough big tractor-trailers: I have only enough of the now out ofproudction school buses to make one more trailer (the tanker) and one more tractor - until something really interesting comes along, I won't make any more.
The "small" set are 1:50 scale. This scale looks better in some ways - for one thing since they are about 15% smaller they make the layout look 15% larger!
. Also a big advantage: 1:50 trucks look best with wheels cannabalized from the 'Streets Ford panel van, which WBB still makes. I bought one yesterday that gave its all for the yellow UP trailer below. Finally, these puppies will run on standard D21 "Streets, even struggled (alot) through D16 curves. By contrast the 1:43 are too long to run on anything by the "D30" curves I made for my country road.
Anyway, I have two completed, shown below. The green Whole Foods ten-wheeler is the first tractor trailer I built after I completed my country road and one I posted video of a while back (as I also did of the red Volvo cab over above, too). It is Ertl and regardless of the claimed scale (not sure myself, it does not say on the bottom, but I thought they were 1:43) it measures out and looks to be 1:50. Anyway, my pride and joy right now is the Yellow Specast truck. It runs great, and has opening doors and hood - how cool!!! I plan alot of 1:50 trucks, more than the two completed and the two tractors waiting for conversion until more WBB panel vans I ordered arrive (I'm out ofwheels).
FOR NOW, you will notice I have left all the wheel hubs chrome, as they are on 'Streets vehicles. I am thinking of painting them in appropriate colors. Not sure though.
