# Athearn Rotary Snow Plow Mod



## jlassen (Dec 5, 2013)

So I turned up a used, incomplete Athearn Rotary Snow Plow, in Great Northern Livery, which is perfect for my early 70s/80s BN Setup.

Here's the Model instructions:








Basically, my snow plow is missing the specialized front trucks and rubber band drive.

Initially I was going to do was throw on a pair of regular two axel trucks on the front and call it a day. Rotary blade wont' spin, but It looks nice sitting around on the track waiting for winter. 

But the tinkerer in me is thinking of throwing an Old DC engine in there, and connecting up the rotar shaft DC motor, and put some kind of trucks on the front that are not powered but do have power pick ups. 

Should I just try and scavenge a two axle truck from an engine? These seem expensive... http://www.ringengineering.com/PowerPickUpTruck.htm and I'm not really sure about some of the home brew pick up-setups I've seen.


Second... I know it depends on the engine, but what would the best way be to connect up that rotary shaft to an engine? Directly with a drive shaft? Some kind of gearing in between? Can I just buy a drive shaft extension, like this?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HO-ATHEARN-...118834?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item46188596f2

Do most/all engines have the same kind of drive shaft attachment, or is it case by case? Seems like some scavenging might be in order here as well.


Biggest hassle seems to be reliably attaching a truck to that front mount. Near as I can tell, its the rubber bands that reliably hold the truck to the swivel shaft. Seems like drilling it out and screwing something into it would work best. But again, depends on the trucks, I guess.

I know the new Athearn Rotary plows have some circuits so the plow always spins at the same rate, and goes in the same direction. I'm willing to accept the shortcomings of this set up, and it seems it would be easy to upgrade to a DCC if/when I get there. Mainly though, i don't want my tinkering to cost as much as the new powered Plows.... 

Thoughts?


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## dannyrandomstate (Jan 1, 2012)

If you look for HI-F drive ho scale on the bay it turns up some things. Best bet would be to hunt around. Throw an ad on the classifieds here. I "might" have an extra truck some where. Still unpacking so I would have to dig for it.


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## alcoman (Nov 4, 2009)

I have one of those kits. I thought about using a 3 volt dc motor and just putting batteries in the plow body. They make a small switch that can be turned on/off by waving a magnet over it. (Some people have written about using them for passenger car lighting.)
I salvaged several small motors from battery powered toys already, so this is on my to-do list.


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