N scale moving automobiles

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

2 topics actually:

  1. Ive often though it would be cool to have moving cars/autos on my N scale roads, but obvious limitations abound. I saw an article where someone had cut a slit in the road and attached poles to the bottoms of the car and moved the vehicles that way. sounds ok, but i really hate to cut up my roads. I was thinking about magnets. anybody tried this? you could mount tiny magnets in the bottoms of the cars and use moving magnets under a thin styrene road … cars would move without slits in road. just a thought. any other suggestions?

  2. where can you find more modern N scale autos? Walthers catalog has mostly either really old stuff (1920’s -1950’s era autos) or a bunch of european stuff. the selection of modern N scale autos is scare at best. anybody know where to find them. maybe i could mold some for more quantity if i hade decent prototypes. micromachines look pretty fake if u ask me.

Thanks in advance
Chad

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I’ve had the same thought for a long time—moving cars and trucks around using magnets (I’m sure we aren’t the only ones). A computer program might control the action to make it more realistic. With the emergence of nanotech in the near future, perhaps each vehicle might be controlled by remote control, with turning wheels, steering, etc. Next, how about robotic mini people?

You really going to try this in N scale? Good luck!

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The plastic road and magnets works however you have to paint the road on the underside to keep the vec. from hanging up and this gives you a VERY shiny road. You can use a loop of plastic (think fan belt)glue the vec. to it and the road moves instead of the vec. You need two loops (one east, one west for example) put across a bridge between two tunnel portals or between clumps of trees or clusters of buildings.If you put a lot of vec. on the loops you can’t see the divide between the loops and it’s effective. Mike