# Operating HO automobiles with trains



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

I am wanting to have 30 autos running at scale 35 MPH throughout my train set up but cannot determine how. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Slot car track with pulse power has been considered.


----------



## PhillipL (May 5, 2012)

Hi Don,

There is a car/truck system that you could use. Faller makes the system which has everything from cars, buses and trucks that will move by using their road system. Euro Rail Hobbies sells various starter sets. It is not cheap by from what I seen on videos it really looks great.


----------



## Cycleops (Dec 6, 2014)

Here it is explained:


----------



## MikeB (Feb 11, 2016)

That sounds like a neat idea, so I googled Faller. There closest brick and mortar store to me is over 800 miles away. Must not be to many US distributors yet. Walthers does carry them though.


----------



## Rip Track (Dec 15, 2012)

Hi MikeB. Here are two distributors I'm aware of.

http://www.reynaulds.com/faller.aspx

http://www.eurorailhobbies.com/erh_list.asp?mn=8&ca=85&sc=HO
(Eurorail Hobbies is in British Columbia, Canada. They do ship worldwide though.)


----------



## Cycleops (Dec 6, 2014)

The only problem I can see is that the vehicles offered are all European types so you may have to swap bodies if you're a sticker for accuracy.


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

The only problem I see is the cost!
Anywhere from $120, up to $250 etc per vehicle!
At $123.00 average per vehicle it will cost you $3700 just for 30 vehicles. And they are all European so you would somehow have to Americanize them?

I like the Faller Houseboat. I don't see any other water vessels for sale but in the future I guess some tugs and ships will be made? Tugs and ships moving on the water would look nice.:thumbsup:










Great ideal, not so great price.
But like they say, if you want to play you got to play.


----------



## Lee Willis (Jan 1, 2014)

I had the Faller car system, about 200 feet of roads and ten or more vehicles, before I shifted to O-gauge ten years ago, in both N and HO. it is an incredibly impressive system when set up right, it just blows you away with the realism and activity: no slots or visble rails, etc., and vehicles can start and stop in cycles, etc. I had a garbage truck that would stop every couple of houses as it went through my residential area and a school bus that stopped at bus stops and in front of the school.

But go into the Faller system with your eyes open. Here is what I learned, for what, if anything, it is worth.

The vehicles use a slick system to steer. Their front wheels steer so they follow the road, guided by a magnet that follows a thin iron (not steel) wire buried just a mm beneath the road: you see ntohing - the road looks total realistic if you install the wire and paint the road surface well. You have to dig the trentch in your road and lay in the wire, then cover it: Faller makes a plaster to use for that but I just used spackling paste - faster and cheaper. The steering system is smart enough that you can do things like run the wire right over itself - wrap it around the block and come back and cross its own path at 90 deg in an intersection, etc., and the vehciles will figure it out. 

The vehciles have a rechargeable battery and take an hour to charge. When fully charged they run a bit faster than you want (highway speed) for the first five minutes and then the speed gradually drops as they run. They will go about thirty minutes on a charge, but the last ten or five for sure or so are very slow (scale 10 mph or less). So you get about 20 minutes of realistic scale running for a one hour charge. QED: you need three vehicles for every one you are going to keep running on the layout. Also realize that if you want to keep, say, four vehciles running at once all the time, with each having to be switched out every 20 minutes, you will be changing vehicles and pulling them in and out of chargers on average every five minutes: it becomes a full time job. 

The wire is easy to install but very hard to cut (amazingly hard to cut). The most important thing I learned is, keep it as shallow as you can, and _double it up:_ run two wires side by side in the same trench. Really, doubling it up (Faller doesn't tell you to, but I did) makes the magnet sense the wire much better, and reduces likelihood of a vehcile "going off the reservation" by missing a turn, etc., much much less likely. This happened a lot with one-wire in N, and sometimes on 90 deg street corners with one wire in HO. I went back and installed two, and it never happened again. 

I found the vehciles delicate and with a service life of about half a year - maybe 300 hours each was all. I can fix just about anything but I could never repair these well. They are expensive but I was buying six or so new ones a year as replacementsjust to keep up with what I had that would die. Keeping this system going and in good repair became a major cost to me. The cars trucks and buses are expensive.

On the other hand, it is spectacular when you have it all set up. There are no slots, etc. You can buy (expensive and difficult to set up and fuss with) full intersecton sets that stop and start the vehciles at a stop light, cycling the red and green lights correctly, etc., letting them through the intersection in cycle - impressive. There is even an accessory that will load a truck on a flatcar by dring the truck up on a ramp and onto the car.

When I went to O-gauge ten years ago, I tried slot cars with pulsed power. I could get standard cars to go no slower, reliably and smoothly, than about 55-60 scale mph. I thought about custom building gearboxs to reduce speed by 1:3 ratio, but instead I went to the K-Line Superstreets (now Bachmann Williams EZ-STreet system)" the cars run for hours at speeds down to 22 mph. I don't think that system is made in HO though. 

Good luck.


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

Thanks for the help. But whew, I was out at the cost! And a six month life? I also saw that you install their satellite system for GPS. Back to the back burner.

Tx


----------



## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

*Cheaper way*



Bloomfield Station said:


> Thanks for the help. But whew, I was out at the cost! And a six month life? I also saw that you install their satellite system for GPS. Back to the back burner.
> 
> Tx


Bloomfield Station;

A cheaper way to do this would be to motorize the under-the-street cable so that it moved slowly. Small rare earth magnets(Home Depot), attached to the cable, would move with it and the magnet equipped cars would roll along with the cable's magnets. I would build the streets as a flat, wide styrene trough with a thin styrene top for the actual street surface. The cars, trucks, buses, could be your choice of HO models. It would look better if the vehicles had wheels that rotated, but steering front wheels would be your option. Some modification of vehicles would be needed in either case. The moving cable could be simple fishing line running over small pulleys and driven by a Hankscraft, or other brand, gear motor with a larger pulley( www.allelectronics.com for motors and possibly pulleys) wound windlass fashion with a loop of the cable. A pulley with a spring pulling it outward would keep the cable taught.
The system would be more limited than the Faller one, though you could use multiple motors and cables to make it as complex as you like. The same basic idea, minus the magnets, is used on San Francisco's famous cable car system and ski lifts. All the components are reasonably priced. Much cheaper than Faller.

Regards;
Traction Fan :smilie_daumenpos:


----------



## Lee Willis (Jan 1, 2014)

traction fan said:


> Bloomfield Station;
> 
> A cheaper way to do this would be to motorize the under-the-street cable so that it moved slowly.
> 
> ...


I tried that a number of years ago and it works, but I have a better suggestion. Just run a small (N guage) or O-guage loco under the street to pull the magnets. This has numerous advantages, and you can space magnets all along the train on loco and cars and pull multiple cars - the spacing of the magnets would keep the cars in lline and spaced apart. You could make trench with the track down in it underneath the roads, etc. 

A week or so ago I posted on the O-gauge forum here, a detailed story with photos and all of how I tried cables, wheels, and other things to do this for my moving boat on lake. The use of a train underneath with magnets worked best there, too. If you want, here is a link to it. It might have something to help. 

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=79825


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

Wow! Now this one I can afford. I'm going to build a small version to test out the plan and it looks promising. Thanks for idea and help from all.


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

So many ways to solve a problem I had thought about for years. Pulley system and magnets and trains running underground. Never thought of these methods. I plan to research with testing to see which works under my display. I may have to modify my bracing to accommodate the use of under table spacing. 

Thanks again for time you spent on this,

Bloomfield Connection


----------



## mjrfd99 (Jan 5, 2016)

We've run the older slot car track through the train layout- Older Thunderjet/Aurora and Atlas cars and trucks are fairly close to the HO scale. It's not perfect but having the car track adds a lot of fun and my kids and their/our friends got more involved because the slot cars were what they liked. The newer cars are fun to run also. Late '70's era AFX trucks are close in scale too. We've made a few 53 ft reefers, tankers and Lowboy trailers to pull behind the Tractors - they've been pretty popular the past couple years with the Christmas eve gang. From 8-80 y/o my wife has to drag them away to the dinner table LOL 
We aren't prototypical but we have a lot of fun


----------



## Cycleops (Dec 6, 2014)

I was going to suggest some sort of slot car arrangement but thought you might find the slots too obtrusive compared to the Faller system. You could make your own roads by leaving a slot in the middle with some conductive material each side. Providing you could hide the motor on the car/truck you could use HO vehicles.


----------



## Rip Track (Dec 15, 2012)

Do a search for "HO routed slotcar track". You might find some ideas you like. Some slotcar enthusiasts use routers to carve slots on wood roadbed. Usually copper tape is used to conduct power. But I've seen thin wire embedded in the track too. A rather convincing road surface could be made this way.


----------



## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Cycleops said:


> I was going to suggest some sort of slot car arrangement but thought you might find the slots too obtrusive compared to the Faller system. You could make your own roads by leaving a slot in the middle with some conductive material each side. Providing you could hide the motor on the car/truck you could use HO vehicles.


LifeLike (Walthers) makes HO scale slot cars. Only problem is that the designs are not suitable for street vehicles. The vehicles are kind of wide, though, but maybe you could mount a regular HO vehicle shell on a slot car chassis with some surgery.


----------



## traction fan (Oct 5, 2014)

*HO Tugs*



Big Ed said:


> The only problem I see is the cost!
> Anywhere from $120, up to $250 etc per vehicle!
> At $123.00 average per vehicle it will cost you $3700 just for 30 vehicles. And they are all European so you would somehow have to Americanize them?
> 
> ...


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

I have HO slot cars and of course they are 1/64. I have purchased track and several original Aurora 70's cars and had hoped to do both; allow g kids to race thru trains and scenery as well as slow them down by pulsing the power. But to no avail on the pulsing that many cars. I'm going to install the slot cars for my grand children to run and some sort of under track system for cars to run as well. Since I'm running passenger only, it shouldn't be difficult to mix the three together. Thanks for input and ideas.


----------



## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

What happened to using trolley cars? Adds another dimension to your layout.


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

This might be what I can do. I am actually taking down my track and building a new one in another room. I will be keeping in mind the designs of this cable system. I also thought about the trains under track but won't have enough room since I want to also have a subway system under the tables. I plan to install my "platforms/table/shelfing" or whatever you call the tracks as a floating shelf in 36" x 36" sections so I can move them to work on them. This will alow the cable system you describe since I am starting from scratch. 

Thanks again for the design.


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

Yep, I plan to have only passenger trains, eight cars each, two stations, subway system, streetcars and slot cars that actually are aurora with the original "pin and clip"track and 70's cars. I can use the pulley to also pull cars (matchbox) on same track.

Thanks again


----------



## Lee Willis (Jan 1, 2014)

Good luck with it. You should have a lot of fun.

Trolleys are a good suggestion. They are passenger cars in a way, if you think if it that way.


----------



## Bloomfield Station (Mar 15, 2016)

Tx, trolleys are a perfect addition. Of course in 2175 they could be cordless huh?


----------

