I have an Emco/GMC trolley, one of the later ones that says Dinkyville on the sides. The motor is pretty poor, and a wire from the commutator broke or burned out. I was thinking about putting an AF motor from a handcar in it. Then it would be an S gauge trolley.
I have one of these cars that had some major issues with the shell, but the chassis runs just fine. They actually made an S gauge version too, from what I remember.
Because my chassis is good and the shell has issues, I have been debating using my chassis to power something else!
Regarding commutator wires, I remember being stumped for a long time on why my standard gauge Lionel 8E wasn’t working, only to find all the solder joints to the commutator were bad. I was able to carefully solder them all back down and it’s been happy as a clam since.
I bet the handcar motor strategy might just work, but you would need to mount it differently- iirc, the motor is held in to the trolley via the axle ends, and the metal frame is held to the plastic body with a pair of screws. But it’s been forever since I was inside it so I may be wrong.
Mine has three basic parts. The plastic shell, the motor/wheel assembly, and a black sheet metal box which provides a skirt or shroud around the wheels.
This shell from the early 50s is only 6 inches long bumper to bumper, and the roof is more like 5-1/4" so I thought it might be a good S gauge trolley. I’m waiting for a Flyer handcar motor to come in the mail.
This might be your day. Below are pictures of my Pittsburgh Railways S gauge PCC street car running on my layout.
The picture at the suburban station is interesting because the people are S scale but the station is HO. It is the Whitehall station from Walthers. It was raised slightly to sit properly along the tracks. We thought the structure was large enough to work with S scale; it is impossible to find all the necessary structure kits in 1/64th scale.
Here is a picture of the trolley departing the station. In the interesting trivia department, the S scale track is too narrow for the trolley. All Pittsburgh Railways track was 5’-2.5”, 6” wider than standard gauge. It is officially designated Pennsylvania Broad gauge.
This trolley is introduced on page 55 of the Dec. 1950 issue of MR magazine. According to the page, the car is powered by a gap-ring motor that utilizes front axle as a rotor… The figure is adaptation of pages 73-74 of the same issue.