Car Modification Advice

[Don Stafford]

I bought a pair of Kato 800081 N scale high speed trucks because I thought they would be perfect to use in making flashing red end devices for some of my n-scale freight cars for use on a DCC layout.  I already had some tiny flashing diodes with built in resistors.  All I would have to figure out would be how to cut two neat crescent-shaped slits in my cars' floors to enable mounting the contact-equipped trucks.  My Kato material handling cars are already equipped with the same trucks explicitly for this purpose.  I'd appreciate any anyone's suggestion on how I might cut these crescent openings in the floors of my cars for using the 800081 trucks in my project? 

[skipgear]

A dremel tool with a small burr or router bit and a steady hand. One you open up a hole, small files can be used to finish the job.

[Don Stafford]

Thanks Skipgear.  The slits that the contacts arc in are about .040 wide so I'll try to find a 62 or 64 router bit, if such a creature exists, and try making the arcs.

[skipgear]

You don't have to be that precise.





As long as there is enough room for the truck to pivot freely and the contacts can extend through the floor of the car, you are fine. You can see in the version above, I bent the pickup strips down to go through the floor and meet with the pickups on the trucks.