The Takasaki Light Railway

This is the smallest (so far) railcar on the Daruma Line.  It is a converted hand-pushed passenger carriage that has had a petrol engine added and driver's cockpit.

Made from plastic card with a Tamiya motor gearbox underneath, it ambles along at a medium (scale) jogging pace.  It has renently undergone modifications because when I added points to the track it annoyingly get stuck on them due to the low gearbox.  I have subsequently cut most of the underside of the plastic gearbox casing away and it now runs with no apparent difficulty.

Here you can see the length is just enough for a row of 4 people per side.

Kiha Railcar.

This was the very first motive power on the line.  Two AA cells power the Tamiya motor.  It has a rather long '100mm) wheelbase which gives it some problems with the tight sections of the track.  I shall try to modify it so that either the wheelbase can be reduced to around 60mm.

I have recently bought a couple of booklets on Japanese light railways, both with shorter railcars of the petrol-engined variety and will model one of then, though give it a 'Whimshire ' spin.

The wheelbase of this railcar is 100mm, which you might think is fine for a small narrow gauge line.  However, either due to the tightness of the wheel flange to rail or the wheelbase the railcar has some difficulty negotiating the set curves.  Prototype railcars had wheelbases of 2m, which approximates to 100mm.  Nevertheless, I have reduces the wheelbase to 60mm.  In order for it not to look odd with the reduced wheelbase I have chopped the length by two windows.

 The rear panel has been stuck back on and will require some additional stripwood as trim.  I used a long hacksaw to chop off the back and to sever the rear end.  The resulting railcar is very different in appearance.  There were a few railcars of the 1920-1030 era that were shorter and so I can still say that it is based on a prototype.

Another railcar is in the pipeline!