Any suggestions for sources/manufacturers of small motors for use around an HO scale layout?
Try an old Locomotive motor and a cheap power pack.
A Tortoise switch machine motor is another option for animation - I have used one to activate crossing gates. It can be driven directly from 5V CMOS logic buffers. Stall current was less than
10mA.
Dan Prysby
My old Phillips portable dictaphone died recently, and I have canabalised it. The microphone is going into a motorcycle rider-to-rider radio, but the motor and geartrain are destined for my Olympic
Line. They'll make a nice drive for a turntable.
LocoTorque
There are also the electronic surplus stores you can check for small to large motors:
http://www.edmundscientific.com/
Even with the big windows, a complete interior might not be necessary, especially the smaller details, as those windows [at 12"=1'] are rarely clean enough, at least on the outside, for a really
clear view of what is in there. A processing plant might well be clean and sterile internally, but not externally, unless they just opened last week. Any ideas for moving shadows to simulate life
within the walls of several online industries?
When I was about 12 or so, I had a model of a "house on fire". The old farm style house was modeled burnt, and had a smoke generator, a little pump so that the fire truck would squirt water, and,what
is important here, a "fire".
The fire was a clear acetate drum, about the size of a toilet tissue roll, if I recall correctly, with red "fire" and black "smoke" markings on it. It had a bulb in the center, and rotated around
driven by a small motor, geared down slow. It threw flickering lights and shadows, looked pretty cool for 1966. You might be able to rig something up like this, printing "figures" on a transparency
sheet and placing a light behind it with some sort of means to move it around.
Clay
Why not have back lit a photograph of a plant behind a "dirty" window???
TOM
How about a kitchen clock with the silhouettes rotating on the hour hand, maybe the minute hand depending on what the picture/action is.
Maybe a picture of the machines hanging over the clock with the people moving in front of it otherwise you would have to paint the windows white to show the shadows.
Donald
A while back there was a discussion on using a 9v radio and bulb to produce a flickering flames effect. I thought I remembered all the parts but my attempt at this simple project failed. Could
someone please help me with the particulars? Particularly the bulb voltage to power off of the earphone jack.
Miniatronics as well as other electronics companies puts out a bulb for this purpose.
Old radios can be had a junk stores for 50 cents to a dollar. All you need is the room for them. Connect the bulb to the speaker output. Slowly increase the volume. I just put an orange LED across
the earphone leads.
Rusty Keeney
"Are you building a still life?" So read the header some years back for MRC. They were touting improvments in their power supplies to give model railroaders better control of their trains. With today's DCC, that is now a moot question.
Or is it? "Are you building a still life?" could also apply to that part of the layout not on the tracks, and is equally applicable to some classes of dioramas. You have miniature people everywhere, but are they "alive" or just statues? What on your layout says "People live here"?
For starters, how about lighting? This is the easiest and cheapest way to add a little life to the scene; even if you can't see the (lack of) detail inside an industrail building, the mere fact that light is shining out thru the dirty windows says that something is going on inside. Working street lights add immensely to a scene in miniature, as do lighted signs for the stores downtown. One small step further gets to working lights in railroad crossbucks and the moving lights of a theatre marque.
So much for "visible" light. "Invisable" light is a misnomer, but what I have in mind is to get shadows to work for you, moving shadows in point of fact. This can be done mechanically (it's all done with smoke and mirrors) or electronically. Pay a long visit to Jim Well's site http://www.fantasonics.com for a far better explanation than I am capable of. Short version, if the light appears to vary over time, then "something/someone" is making that happen. Jim refers to this as "electric inhabitents". Jim also has available some tapes for subtle background sounds that I must try someday soon.
Onward and upward in our search for life on the layout, and I do mean upward. Moving roof vents are subtle and may not catch the eye, but the mind records them and deduces life in that building. Campbell's roof vents are easily modified for this, as they come in two pieces from the manufacturer. Thru-the-wall fans are a little more difficult to animate, but do-able. Can't find a suitable fan? A circle of clear plastic with thin stripes painted on it will work about as well, particularly from "two feet" away. In the subtle class I also place things like a moving conveyor belt or an elevator that actually goes up and down. That last could be done with just a light.
Raising the ante once more, how about moving vehicular traffic, or a parade? And NO, I have not (yet) figured out how to get a marching band to actually march in HO. "Model motoring" sets or an endless belt with magnets have worked for some, but there pitfalls in the nature of "everything is moving all the time at the same speed". There is probably a software/hardware guru somewhere working on that problem, if indeed it has not been solved and I just haven't heard about it.
And now for the "Inna-you-face" type of animation. Have any of you ever been to a train show where one of the display layouts had an operating carnival? If you have, you KNOW where the most crowded part of that show is. The ride modelers group here on Yahoo is about half the size of this one and is dedicated to just that. Lights, action, and, in some cases, sound, bring that "world" to life! Given that most of that group are current or ex carnies, the realism can be breath-taking. For those who like the idea, but don't want to dedicate that much time, money and/or layout space, IHC makes several kiddy ride and concession stand kits that can be "set up" in a parking lot or on a blocked-off street for a smaller version of the same thing. One of things that I have "in progress" is a set of three timer cams turning at slightly different speeds to stop/start about a (future) dozen or so kiddy, standard, and 'major' rides. Doing the Ferris Wheel prototypically is still undo-able with what I have, but...
Side-bar: Realism and believability are not necessarily the same thing, or not in my mind anyway. Realism is how-it-is/was, and believibility is how-it-could/should-be/was. Modeling a 1930ish amusement park leaves me unable to use many of the kits available as designed, since they did not exist in that time frame. But I can, and will, use rides that were probable, like a "Spirit of St. Louis" themed airplane ride, and some of the designs that I have found in the US Patent and Trademark Office files. Some may have never been built, but they were issued patents prior to 1930, so using them is "believable" if not necessarily "realistic".
That should take care of my "sermons" for a little while; if I have provoked some of you to thought, I have done what I set out to do. Happy modeling!
Jack "The trolley nut" Priller