Just had to report on it. Bachman has recently released a Peter Witt type streetcar in HO scale.A long time comming for many years brass was the only way to get what was next to the PCC car one of the most common type of double trucked streetcar.
It’s a great running and good looking little model. The motor and flywheels are mounted below the floor and it has a rudimentary interior, with enough room to add passengers and a bit of other details ( controllers etc )I picked up the undec one’s as I’m going to paint and detail them for TTC units which are not yet available in pre-painted.
iIteresting to note that it is DCC ready, and the undec came with a plug and play decoder and a dummy plug for those wishing to run it on straight DC. I noticed that it has a provision for a sound decoder at some point as well, and they have set it up to run either from track or overhead power via a little slide switch hidden under the car.
Hopefully it’s the start of more traction product,one can only hope [tup]
Great idea! I hope this thread inspires more traction modelling. While few modellers are doing traction-only layouts, I think they’re a great addition to a layout. Traction generally will let you use tighter curves and steeper grades than you would ever think to use for freight. It also gives you a way to add passenger service to your towns without supporting 85-foot long cars and block-long stations.
Which brings me to another question: How tight a curve can these take?
I imagine you could do 15"-18" radius for HO. that’s good news to me because My layout has 18" radius curve. Traction is a nice alternative and those steeplecabs look fascinating. maybe I’ll change gears and have a mix of mainline modeling and traction.
Hi guys I haven’t got any photo’s shot of it yet ( I’m just lazy ) Mr B it’s just the standard 3 or 4 function basic bachman dcoder that they put in their dcc equied locomotives. Tio be honest I din’t run DCC so I haven’t paid much attention to it.VW-1 is the only number I can see printed on the decoder itself. As to the speaker compartment looks lioke and inch or inch and a half space is available right at the front of the the underframe.It has baffle holes punched in it, so their suggestion is a speaker + decoder. I’m not aware of any traction decoders yet , but again I don’t run DCC so I really haven’t looked. I figured that I would mention the extra features on the item so all the DCC’er’s will knwo what’s out there.
All in all I’m pleased with it. I noticed that teh suggested US retail price for them is $125 full MSRP, I paid $100 CDN at my local and they had five or six more ( put another aside for myself)[:-^] so there must be some give in the pricing or it’s just our CDN dollar at work.
They claim it will handle 15" radius, looks to me that it has a fair bit “o” swing in the bit of testing I’ve givin it, It wouldn’t supprise me if it could handle a twelve. In TTC terms we would call this a Small Witt 47’ long version. As you might know Totonto ordered over 300 Witt’s in the twenties 100 were ;arge Witt’s for trailer pulling 53’ long cars the rest were smalls essentially the Bachman model with a few minor detail changes. Looks liek they are offering all teh big US users accept for Detroit at the moment. give them time I breifly read through Bachman’s website forum and it’s getting rave revues in the traction community stateside. As I said if this goes over well hopefully it will cause them to redo their PCC and Brill trolley into a more respectable Spectrum type like this Witt and hey a birney or two wouldn’t hurt eithe
I thought I remembered reading about someone using the Central Valley track and getting curves as tight as 12" radius for their traction layout. Just depends what your trollies will run on I guess.
Traction curves go VERY sharp, lads. HO scale interurban equipment can typically handle 8-10" curves when not MU’d, although you can even MU them if you use the proper sort of swinging coupler, and streetcars (single truck or double truck) in HO should, ideally, be able to handle a 6" curve. The Bachmann Brill can do a 6" curve if that cheap Lucite light rod is taken out and the truck mounts shaved back a bit, or 9" out of the box. Most Ken Kidder or Suydam streetcars could handle such curves out of the box. So could Bowser kits, once you got all the flash off.
Modeling electric freight with conventional freight cars (most appropriate for western electrics like YVT, PE, SN, etc) means making do with super-wide 12" curves that can handle a conventional 40-foot boxcar.
I realize that many reading this will think I’m insane, but I assure you, yes, 6" minimum radius in HO scale is quite possible with traction.
Of coarse for the really crazy of us you can buy actual trolley type girder rail and switches from the Orr track system,it’s essentially a scratch building kit but if it’s used and you sink it in your roads it’s about a real looking as streetcar trackage can get. I for one am not that brave though.
Thanks for that info. I thought I remembered them being super tight. I thought about putting a trolley loop through my city but didn’t think I had enough room. 8" radius is definitely do-able though.[tup]
Silly me I thought that they only made and sold tools [D)] Anyway as promissed here’s a few photo’s , sorry did them quick so they are not the clearest.
Mr B this is the decoder that comes with it , also comes with the nine pin dummy plug for those out there like me that are of the DC flavour
The circut board which is hidden inside the roof that snaps of the body for accessability.
An interior shot, the black disk at the front is where one would install a sound speaker underneath it it’s pre- drilled with baffles to let the sound out for when I’m assuming a sound decoder is available for them.
A fine addition for the traction folks, although I am modeling an area their not used, I might buy one for the jollies. Like I bought the NYC subway cars, I am modeling chicago area stuff.
The pictures of the Chicago surface lines paint job looks good ,actually all the photo’s of the painted ones look good. I’m hoping they include Toronto eventually, nice thing about the TTC is that they didn’t completly phase out the Witt’s until 1963-64 and even then several were kept for toru tram and speacial occations one 2766 was completly rebuilt in 2002 an can still be chartered in the city. The two tour tram one’s large Witt 2424 and small 2894 came to our museum where we run both today , my other fun hobby is running the witt’s and PCC’s and older stuff at the museum for the general public in the summers.
