Teach Your Engineers to Turn Heads - 1
Here’s a short
project that you can
finish in an evening
or two that will really
turn heads! ...
– Dr. Geoff Bunza
Photos by the author
J
ohn Armstrong described an O-scale project in Model
Railroader back in November 1989. He used a geared
mechanism tied to an open frame motor to turn a scale
model engineer’s head. In this article we’ll do the same for HO
scale cabs with a small motor that can be run with both DCC
and DC locomotives.
After choosing a locomotive with enough cab room next to
the engineer’s window (I used an Athearn GP9), obtain a small
1
Teach Your Engineers to Turn Heads
pager motor. Tiny pager/vibrator motors are readily available
on the surplus market (AllElectronics.com, goldmine-elec.com,
and ebay). These are normally used to vibrate cell phones, pag-
ers, tooothbrushes, etc. They have very little torque, but use
very little current – typically 25-40 milliamperes. Obtain the
smallest one you can find (mine was only 0.47 inches long!).
Begin by removing the eccentric weight from the motor shaft
– carefully! I’ve done this two ways: Either by clamping the
weight in a vise and punching the shaft out with the blade of
a small screwdriver, or by mounting a small (#73) drill bit in
reverse in a drill press and pushing the shaft out (1).
Next I chose to re-shape a Bachmann figure of a Minister into
an engineer leaning out a locomotive cab window (see fig-
ure 2). The motor will turn a block of .080 styrene about 0.30
inches square. Drill two holes: one to accommodate a press-fit
of your motor axle, and the other about a #67 drill to fit the
MRH-Feb 2013
