More Coming Attractions: Motorizing E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach

Left: My build of E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach | Right: BD Concepts drive unit with my base attached

If you are a longtime reader here you may recall I've had it on my to-do list for quite awhile to motorize E. L. Moore's Spumoni Club Coach project. If you follow that link you'll see that back in 2016 I noted that what E. L. Moore, Lucious Beebe, and Charles Clegg thought was a regular old coach operated by the Grasse River Railroad was actually a self-powered vehicle called the 'Rolliam'. Since finding that out I've been toying with the idea of motorizing the coach, but have never gotten around to doing it.

BD Concepts HO gauge (16.5mm), 28mm wheelbase drive unit

Recently the magazine Voie Libre has been promoting some drive units manufactured by a company called BD Concepts. I found their motor bogies intriguing and thought one of them may be a good choice for a motorized coach.

Mr. Moore notes in his article that he used a passenger truck from Central Valley that had an 8' scale wheelbase. I didn't have such a truck on hand, so I used one with a 8'-6" wheelbase that John generously gave me. BD-Concepts has an HO-gauge drive unit with a 28mm wheelbase, which translates to 8 scale HO feet, so that seemed a good choice for the project. I bought one from here, and the instruction sheet can be found here.

There are two ways one can attach the drive to a body: using a screw through the centre post, or by clipping on a flat base by way of those 4 sprung protrusions near the centre top of the unit (there are 2 on each side). I chose to use the second method as I think it's more appropriate for this project. 

0.040" thick, 19' x 8' styrene base with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole in the centre

The BD Concepts instructions note that if you're using the second method, the base needs to be 1mm thick, with a 21mm x 12.5mm rectangular hole for accommodating the top of the drive unit. The 1mm thickness translates very closely to 0.040". E. L. Moore notes his base is 19' x 8', so I cut a piece of 0.040" thick sheet styrene to that size with the recommended hole cut in the centre. You may recall Mr. Moore used a scrap of yard stick for his base, and so did I, so this is a big change!

The base fits the drive quite well and is held in place very snuggly by the little clips. I was chomping at the bit to give this thing a try, so I went ahead and got it ready for a test spin on the Way Out Layout.

I put a piece of electrical tape over the centre opening because I didn't want my weight shorting out the motor. The instructions say that for the unit to run reliably it needs a little weight, so for that I used a 1 euro coin, which the internet tells me weighs 7.5 grams and seems appropriate for this test. I used some household tape to attach it to the base.

The BD Concepts instructions say the unit's operating voltage is 0 to 12V, and not to exceed 15V. To be on the safe side I ran the test with my Rokuhan RC-02 battery powered controller. It only puts out a maximum of 10V when the batteries are fresh, so the recommended maximum can't be exceeded. As well, I did some loops of the track simply by pushing the terminals of a new 9V battery against the track. In this video of one lap of the track, the Rokuhan controller is set to about 2/3 maximum.

  

The unit runs quite well and I think it will be alright for the Spumoni Club Coach, er, Spumoni Club Rolliam :-) This is another project awaiting the snow to fly, but in the meantime I need to think about whether I'll just replace the truck on the coach I've already built, or build a new Spumoni Club Rolliam specific body. The current body doesn't have an interior control station, or a place for a driver, and I would suspect there'd need to be a radiator out front as the Rolliam was powered by an automobile engine. Well, these deep questions need lots of coffee :-)