The model is battery powered with an electromotor and RC unit from a cheap RC toycar.
The base of the car is formed by the chassis of the RC car. The rear wheels of the RC car where removed from the motor driven rear axle and replace by metal train wheels that came from Liliput #999300 replacement wheels/axle set.
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| The donor for RC and motor |
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| The chassis was modified with plastic strips to suport the front axle |
At the front section of the RC car chassis the steering mechanism was removed and some plastic strips were used to make a support for the front axle. The car was to light weighted and derailed with the front wheels almost constantly. So a bit of weight was placed in front to give it downward pressure preventing it to derail.
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| The weight in front |
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| Rear wheels fitted perfectly to track width |
When all the work on the chassis was done the body was test fitted, followed by some test runs on the layout.
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| Testfitting the body on the chassis |
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| Low-rider! |
Next step was to fill up the hole for the spare wheel at the back. I placed a round piece of styrene in it covered with a layer of Milliput that was than sanded with fine sandpaper to match the contour of the tailgate. Also a driver was installed. The driver came from a 1:24 scale driver figure set from Fujimi (Fujimi 11040) and fitted very nicely.
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| Bodywork... |
This video shows a testrun on my old layout.
The car was sprayed in a green livery. Warm white LED's where placed in the kits headlights by sanding of the backside of the headlights and using the wires as supports. At the rear a red signal light was placed, using a red LED.
The end result was a very nice little car that was running actual very smoothly on the old layout where it had to climb reasonable slopes as well. I am not sure if there was in fact a Mercedes 170 serving a railway somewhere in the world but it would not be strange as many (perhaps redundant or outdated) vehicles were used to rebuild into railcars used as low-cost vehicles for inspection or other goals. But I think it catches the looks ans appearance of such rail vehicles nicely (like the 1937 Ford V8 railcar at the DSB museum in Odense, Denmark).
Pictures of the railcar on the layout (edit April 6 2019)
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