has anyone here ever try to use an old toy to mechanicalize their train set? i find myself at time cleaning out the my 3 kids closets and toy boxes and taking the time to examine all the toys that are broken to see if there is anything i can use on my ho train table. i am going to attempt to put a movable crane somewhere and build it from scratch. i have been eyeing up old tonka remote control with cable toys. i also found my wifes old 12" rotating snowman that broke. that would give me 90 degrees of movement. i just have to mount it under the table and extend somekind of rod to spin the crane cab.
again just wondering what /if anyone else has done.
Many toys can be raided for open loads parts and molded details. The late Dean Freytag was a master at adding what looked like incredibly compex detail to his steel mill models, and would make a clinic audience gasp and laugh when he’d reveal that the “super detail” consisted of a few circles of plastic using a paper punch and the underside of a hotwheels car.
But you pose a more particular question and that is exploting the mechanical (motorized) aspect of a toy. Maybe not totally on topic but a local model railroad club has a crossing signal display that is activated by dropping in a coin. Nice little fund raiser!
I have not done any of this myself, so this is more or less vaporware – but I think there could be some potential in the various motion activated toys – the ones that commence action or noises upon detecting nearby motion. I could imagine for example a movable crane that would be motion activated and that way would impress a visitor but not be running constantly. I have even wondered if motion activated lighting of a layout (in the way some museum and diorama lighting is activated by your presence) would add to the drama.
I could also imagine a layout use for parts from toys that have a crank and pulley system, such as some toy cranes or tow trucks. Indeed some commercial turntable mechanisms have included somewhat similar crank systems.
Just by way of an idea, I do not think I have ever seen a layout which animates the “car pullers” you see at large grain elevators. A dedicated siding for some covered hoppers where car pullers at either end pull the string of cars – at widely spaced intervals of time so it doesn’t look like the back and forth Lionel trolley car – would be an attention getter.
In the Winter 2010 issue of the NMRA Midwest Region Waybill
I have never heard of anything specific being done with old toy parts
But have seen a few little animations and some larger ones on exhibition layouts that could have possibly been done with toy parts.
Or with simple home made mechanics using Meccano or a similar engineering toy.
One I saw recently but never got the chance to ask what was used was a hand line plane and that was in “N” then there is the almost inevitable nodding donkey oil pump or rotating sign all of which could probably use the motor out of a broken toy as a motion source
The only limit to what can be done is the imagination what parts are available and the will to make it work.
One that springs to my mind that could be interesting is a crossing gate that protects if thats the right word a ninety degree track crossing.
The gate is a fairly simple one just being an upright and horizontal beam with a brace on it that would be interesting if it could be moved by mechanical means to block the other track and the lights on it lit up.
Or perhaps a ball signal protecting a ninety degree crossing they lasted a lot longer that I would have thought they would have done