Working road vehicles for a garden railway.

Mike W

Western Thunderer
We had a family visit to LegoLand at the weekend – for the Grandchildren of course! For anyone without children and thus not able to visit, the MiniWorld area is actually very good indeed. Making models of things which are instantly recognisable, and yet obviously made from Lego must be even more difficult than making a scale model.

Anyway, its not the railway which interested me, but the road vehicles which they claim to be roughly 1:20 scale. As I’m twiddling thumbs waiting to buy a house, I’m sort of idly planning a Gauge 3 garden railway after we move. The LegoLand cars, vans, buses and lorries look crude but work beautifully, gliding along a tarmac road with no visible guidance. According to their website they work like this:

Quote
Cars, lorries and buses all appear to move and steer on their own, never leaving their set paths, yet not using any rails. These operate using cables buried beneath the paths that emit a low-level radio wave specific to each vehicle. The vehicles pick up this signal, and use it to steer. When a vehicle reaches one of the charging points dotted around its track, it stops, and charges its battery for a set amount of time. Outside park opening hours, the vehicles stop on the charging points and recharge overnight.
Unquote

I am no expert at radio control, nor do I wish to be, but can anyone direct me to a website which explains this in a bit more detail? Is it practical for use in a domestic garden? I would of course not want them to work 24x7, just for a few hours occasionally.

Mike
 

John Miller

Western Thunderer
I would think a visit behind the scenes in this place would provide some interesting insights to how it's done .....


However, I think potential visitors might want to be aware of this rather charming quote on their website ......

"Due to space restrictions (maintenance aisles are quite narrow) we are unfortunately unable to allow persons weighing more than 120 kg, 265 lb respectively, (girth being the deciding factor, for example, a person of 1,60 meters (5'3'') height and 120 kg (265 lb) weight will experience serious space problems)."

.... :)
 

unklian

Western Thunderer
If it can be done in HO scale and smaller, I am sure something could be done in 1:22 scale. There was a 7mm layout not so long ago which had a RC tipper lorry on it which worked very well, there is a thread about its making on RMweb here :http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/in...-road-vehicle-and-powered-gantry-crane/page-1. The only thing with RC is that someone has to drive the vehicle ( and with some skill ) to keep it on the road. Whereas with the Faller and LEGOLAND systems the steering is automatic and the stop and go programmable .
 
Top