HOW TO
MAKE YOUR OWN MOVING VEHICLES SYSTEM
Motion is one of the key elements of model railways, but it’s often just our trains that move. Graham Goodchild offers a means of creating a cheap and effective system for animating your road vehicles.
PHOTOGRAPHY: GRAHAM GOODCHILD
M odel railway layouts often include one or more roads serving part of a town scene, with static vehicles placed on to the road surface. Such scenes can look convincing in a still photograph, but the lack of movement can be disappointing. One way around this is to portray road vehicles in a parked or static state (waiting at a junction perhaps) but, as we know, road vehicles don’t sit still indefinitely.
Indeed, moving vehicles can add an extra touch of realism and Faller’s ‘N’ and ‘OO’/‘HO’ road systems have become well known among modellers. The Faller system consists of self-powered vehicles with motorized chassis fitted with a rechargeable battery, guided along an embedded metal wire cut into the road surface. Faller also produces a range of pre-cut lengths of straight and curved sections of roadway with the metal guide wire pre-installed.