Peter Nutbrown : Snow Plough Mk 3
The general failure of the wedge style snow ploughs to clear the line this winter was the catalyst to make a rotary unit as these had been seen to function well on You Tube. Even with a good run up typically 2ft. of 4ins. deep snow could only be cleared using steam or battery powered locos.
The boxes of bits were still pretty full from abandoned projects and upgrades so a suitable 12v. motor from a scanner was used to drive the fan. Wheels and axle boxes came from the upgrade of some long wheel base Brandbright coaches to bogies which had originally de-railed on reverse curved inclines when in rakes of three or more.
Old stainless steel lamp fittings provided the fan disc and casing, and a table leg the exit tube with its adjustable foot and locknut as the fan coupler.A basic body and flatbed were fabricated from a panelled door with left over strip wood. The sides and rear end were made of the 1/8in. ply and the roof from 1/16in. ply. Six right angle stainless plates were pop riveted to the cut down lamp fitting to make a blower fan and the other fitting was slit to provide a casing by opening it up to form a volute shape. The square table leg was fashioned and pop riveted to the casing for the cleared snow to exit.
The casing was pop riveted to the front of the unit allowing a 1/32in. clearance of the rails. The adjustable foot was machined and drilled to suit the motor shaft and appropriate holes made in the fan casing and front panel for the drive shaft. The unit was test run at 6v. mainly to check the direction but had little power, stalling on 1ins. deep snow.
The voltage was increased to 12v. using 2 x 6v. sealed lead acid batteries in series, these provided valuable weight, snow was thrown about on a test run even though the lying snow had by now degenerated to mainly ice lumps.
Once assembled and painted the unit seamed bland and boxy. A quick look on you tube at the ready built models and real life showed that with some minor additions to the sides and roof a more presentable model could be made. Again, the scrap box was raided for pieces to make windows, grills, funnel, vents and finally the label machine produced cheap decals.A Turnigy 20A. ESC was connected to the motor which is uni-directional and has a power supply to the Planet R6M receiver.
Warning 12v. red LEDs fore and aft illuminate when the power is switched on and additionally the 2 front facing white LEDs when the motor is running. Using the LHS throttle stick on the Planet T5 transmitter and channel 1 on the receiver the blower speed can be controlled to a stop whilst also fully controlling a battery loco on the RHS stick.
The snow plough is fixed link coupled to any loco and is now ready for next winter, not a bad job at under £35 for all the key components plus the time and some consumables. Considering the only new components were the LEDs, the rest being second hand the cost was actually less than £1.
March 2021