A lot of people are looking for a source for an under floor Std Gauge motor. The last source was Ira Keeler, but he passed away early this year. There are a few options in O for motors mounted in the truck frame that will require re gauging in some way.

Steve

@Steve "Papa" Eastman posted:

A lot of people are looking for a source for an under floor Std Gauge motor. The last source was Ira Keeler, but he passed away early this year. There are a few options in O for motors mounted in the truck frame that will require re gauging in some way.

Steve

Yeah, I pretty much gave up hope for an under-floor motor.  I'm assuming that I'll need to go with an O gauge motor and regauge it.  I've heard vague references to "press out the shafts, install longer ones", but hoping for something more specific.

I think I have done what you are thinking of doing . I took two 300 series passenger cars and made a MU set out of them . I even made it work off of a live catenary system that I made as well .  The lead power unit is powered by an MTH trolley motor I bought at York many years ago .

If you Google Standard Gauge Trolley you should come up with some of my videos of the MU running .  I have since boxed everything up , the motor was giving me some trouble and it needs to be cleaned/rebuilt .  I do plan on tuning it up after I finish a few other projects.  Hope this helps you and keep us posted on your progress.

@JohnnieWalker posted:

I think I have done what you are thinking of doing . I took two 300 series passenger cars and made a MU set out of them . I even made it work off of a live catenary system that I made as well .  The lead power unit is powered by an MTH trolley motor I bought at York many years ago .

Thanks for the info - that's almost exactly what I'm planning to do. 

My questions at this point would be:

1) Did you re-gauge the MTH power (if so, how) or did you fabricate some kind of gear / pulley / chain drive that uses the existing wheels?

2) How did you mount the power to the body?

If you have any pics of the underside, I'd love to see them.

#1.  No I did not regauge the wheels . The power truck I bought was from a MTH #9 standard gauge trolley . At York there was a vendor that sold MTH parts and that’s how I got it .
#2.  I mounted it basically the same way it would mount to the trolley . I had to cut the floor of the passenger car to allow the wires to pass up into the car .  
#3. As you can see , the power truck , from a #9 trolley, is large . I believe it is called a #10 truck . So that dictated the size of the trailing truck and the two trucks on the trailing car . You will also notice that since the wheel sets are so large on these cars I had to eliminate the 4 air tanks under the cars .  Two of which were relocated to each side of my pantograph.  I also found and added the whistle , bell and headlight.  The two front porthole windows are actually two finishing washers that I epoxied on after drilling the appropriate size holes .  The color window inserts are from York as well , they are for Williams O scale passenger cars .  Wish I had bought more of them when I had the chance.  By the way the pantograph is raised up a 1/4 inch or so using plastic dowels . I did this because I needed to insulate it from the metal roof , being that it does work off of the working catenary system.  It is kind of a Frankenstein project but it does work . My original plan was to use an Ives passenger car, more along the size of a Blue Comet car but a friend of mine needed the Ives car to complete his train  so I sold it to him and used these 300 series cars instead.  Like a lot of others out there , I am always looking for standard gauge power trucks .  I am in the process of cobbling one together for one of my many projects. I hope one day to post it on here.  Again , I hope this helps and if you need any more info please just ask . Cheers

The power truck you see in the background of one of the photos is an Ira Keeler motor . As Steve Eastman mentioned above he has since passed away . Lucky for me I got to chat with him on a few occasions and I have two of his under the floor motors .

@JohnnieWalker Johnnie, those are great! I can't see the video though, Just what looks like a screen save.

@JohnnieWalker - Thanks for the details. You got a great result. The use of a standard gauge powered truck is what I'd love to be able to do, but as you and others have noted, they're hard to find.  Fortunately, I'm not in a hurry. 

@Will posted:

@JohnnieWalker Johnnie, those are great! I can't see the video though, Just what looks like a screen save.

When I googled "standard gauge trolley", it popped up.

https://youtube.com/channel/UCosvNECzpzDDuGJfWAaySzg

this is my YouTube link .  I hope this works because I may have done this once before ! Lol

@Will posted:

@JohnnieWalker Johnnie, those are great! I can't see the video though, Just what looks like a screen save.

Will , Try the link I just posted above.  I’m not very computer savvy and had to have a friend show me ( again) how to copy and paste a link .  Hope it works for you .

@JohnnieWalker posted:

Will , Try the link I just posted above.  I’m not very computer savvy and had to have a friend show me ( again) how to copy and paste a link .  Hope it works for you .

Nice. Subscribed. Like the Christmas floor layouts.

@Will posted:

Nice. Subscribed. Like the Christmas floor layouts.

Thanks for joining and your kind words .

Here’s a photo that I came across in my archives and hope to replicate some day, or something very similar to it .  

Very nice interurban !  Here is another use of a junk box Lionel #36 standard gauge car. See photo. Body is Lionel #36, cab from Ertl truck. Used O gauge pre-war motor.