The old and struggling Augusta & New Arcadia Railroad attempted, just as many other railroads in the years between the World Wars, to cut costs by discarding steam engines, which were expensive to maintain, and instead buy railbuses with petrol engines.
Unfortunately, it was no great succes. The comfort suffered in the small, rickety buses, and passengers complained about the lack of comforts compared to the former wagons pulled by steam engines.
Nonetheless, the small buses continued to run for many years due to the continued bad financial situation of the Augusta & New Arcadia RR.
The model is in HOn30 scale, which is 1:87 scale using narrow gauge tracks with a width of 30″ in the protoype. I built the railbus from a 3D-printed body from Shapeways, created by Chris333. I added a couple of figures and used a Kato 11-105 chassis for the running mechanism. The railbus is quite small – around 7 cm or a bit less than three inches, including the cow catcher!
The Kato drive runs well, but unfortunately too fast. I have not glued the body to the chassis, so it is easy to open the railbus and replace either motor or gears to make it run slower later. If you have a tip on how to do that, please feel free to leave a comment – it will be appreciated.
I added some tar paper, a chimney and a headlight to the roof, which was otherwise bare. The headlight is actually the chimney of the N-scale steamer I used as the base for A&NA #16. I cut a piece of clear plastic to fit inside to reflect the light. It seems rather crude in the photograph, but looks much better in real life.
I also added some weights, scrap metal and some steel wire glued to the sides of the inner body to make the bus heavier and more stable. It also provides more traction for the small, light chassis.
Above is the entire roster of traction for the Augusta & New Arcadia so far. Read more about the 2-6-0 in my earlier post.
The railbus was a fun build.
It took some time getting the prints from Shapeways and the chassis from eBay, and much longer to actually finish the model, but I really like its worn, weathered appearance. I look forward to building more layout for the railroad, so the railbus can serve the tinest towns.
I also have the similar 3D-printed kit of the similar track speeder, also by Chris333, waiting and look forward to building it later. It is a great feeling to construct your own rolling stock, different from what you see on the model railroad of most people,for my 1930’s freelanced model railroad.
Every time I build a new model, I learn something new. Lots of things go wrong every time, and I am quite sure I will one day look back at these models and see them as primitive, but for the moment, I am very happy about them!
Epoch 