Bachmann Trolly Tips

• Introduction
• Running Properties
• Tracking Problems

Electric trolly cars have been around for a long time. The first ones were installed by Frank Sprague in the 1888. In many cities, they were the most practical way to get around. They were much faster than horse drawn carts and could operate even when the roads were so muddy that getting around in any vehicle other than a horse was nearly impossible.

More interesting information on the construction and operation of a turn of the century (the last century) trolly line can be found in this book.

Bachmann has made, and my still make, models of closed and open sided trolly cars. The open cars were used primarily in the summer as they were much cooler than the closed cars. Of course, the closed cars were preferred in the winter and during bad weather.

I originally got this car in 1992 or 1993. I incorporated features of the GIRR Mountain Division right into the layout design to accommodate this car.

The trolly line is a loop to loop in the upper right portion of the track diagram. By test, I determined that the Bachmann trolly could negotiate 2 foot DIAMETER curves and I needed the room so that is what I used. Trolly cars were good at dealing with very tight curves, this curve radius may be a little tighter than a prototype, but not by much.

The trolly used to have sliders on it, but the sliders would not work in the tight radius track so they were jettisoned quite quickly.

The line operates automatically using custom built circuitry to control the action. Both turnouts on the line are spring switches, one is LGB with the manual control box, and the other is also an LGB turnout but with a light coil spring in place of the manual control box which was just too stiff. The trolly makes two short timed stops in the town with smooth deceleration and acceleration and then makes a long stop behind a view block under the scenery to simulate it going off into the distance for awhile.

The trolly has a single motor block underneath. It originally ran very poorly. It made lots of noise and wasn't smooth at all. I made many stabs at fixing it, to no avail. After the trolly line had been built, I determined that it ran so badly that my carefully designed smooth stop and start circuity wasn't going to work because the trolly just would not run smoothly. I bit the bullet and sent it, with $20, back to Bachmann for repair. When it came back, it had a redesigned bottom end and it actually ran pretty well.

I determined that the trolly was a little light so I have added 4 oz of lead fishing weights underneath.

The trolly always had a tendency to derail right where the lead picture was taken, just exiting a tunnel portal. When I simply pushed the trolly through the whole region of the derailments, I found that it would catch on something. The pilot was actually dragging on the rail and catching in the rail gap at the insulated rail joiners. It took me years to actually dig in and solve this simple problem.

When I applied a dark gray crushed rock to the trolly line in the town to simulate a roadway, I really started to have problems. The trolly would jump and hop around like mad, derailing at many spots. I had cleaned off the track and cleared out the flangeways, but it didn't help.

Just for reference, one of the reed switches that controls a trolly stop can be seen just sticking out of the ballast. The magnetic field of the motor itself is sufficient to trip these switches.

The problem is that the pilot is just too low. The photo shows that the lowest parts are heavily abraded from years of scraping on the rails. Now it was scraping on the newly applied roadway OUTSIDE the rails. It would also catch on the rail joint at the traditional derailment location and pop the trolly off the track so that it ended up derailed on the following turnout which is where I thought that the problem really was. After I just removed the whole sideframe and pilot assembly and ran the trolly, it behaved fine.

Pilots like these were purposely built really low to the track in real trolleys to scrape junk off the right of way which was usually a street. There could be all kinds of crud there that could derail a trolly car if it was allowed to get under the wheels. However, in the model, this item is for decoration only and it doesn't need to be quite so low such that it actually scrapes on the track.

This photo shows how low the pilot was without modification.

The pilot assembly is mounted with four really small screws. It cannot be simply repositioned by opening up the screw holes a little due to interference with a support rod.

I elected to abandon the screws entirely and move the pilot forward just a little to allow it to be canted upward some. To do this a small locator tab needs to be trimmed off the back and a corner trimmed off the front, quick work with a pair of flush cutters. It is then reattached with Zap-A-Gap CA. An additional fillet of Zap-A-Gap has been applied to the support rod to strengthen the joint.

Even though Zap-A-Gap sets up pretty quickly, for maximum strength, it should be left clamped and undisturbed for at least an hour.

With this modification, the trolly pilot is high enough to clear any practical obstacle.

However, when I retested the trolly with the pilot problem solved, I found another problem. There is a protrusion on the sideframe rods that sticks down, sometimes lower than the railheads. This tended to catch in the frog of an LGB turnout when running trailing point from the curved side also causing the trolly to pop up.

Some quick work with flush cutters removed this bump and makes the transition smooth so that if it does actually hit something again, the trolly will slide over it instead of hanging up.