Model Railway Forum

Closer still. So it would seem that these US importers had several custom runs upon the Brawa design, perhaps? Still, that is murky as didn’t Brawa continue until 2008, or thereabouts? Did they license the bus out? Most addling. Search for “South Street Trolley Bus” revealed nothing

Try "south street MODEL trolley bus.
This worked when I tried it.
The only info I found was through the images rather than the text finds !
Colin

Bus works great, installed it on Armodilloville. Now problem is getting a power
pack strong enough to fire it up without burning it up. May need to purchase
a separate 1 amp power pack. I tried using a 1/2 amp Horby set power pack,
and it trips off after two minutes, tops.

The bus looks good !
I must get my mini layout out and run some of the new stock I have bought over the winter.
My youngest son has been fixing his truck during the lockdown and covered the (covered up) layout in engine bits so I could not get at it until now.
I have an Aerotrain by ConCor but as it is H0 scale it would not look good on my H0e railway to make a similar pose !
Regards, Colin.

Thank you for your information, it is useful. I did copy and paste South Street Trolley Bus into the search bar and didn't get much other than
sets for sale. At least we know that it spun off from Brawa to Japan, and then found a market in Baltimore. that must have been a very dedicated
salesman sailing east, back to west, and thus to Baltimore to peddle the sets. In any event, the performance of the unit is more durable and easy to
assemble to erect that I had feared. It really is a fun and unique item, and I rode the protoptype with some pleasure in 'San Franciscio in early 1980. Rrugged and reliablity 50 years later, I delighted, and the modelor seeking to to stirke out in a difference venue may achieve some measuer of success and interest with this fifty year old set. I find the thing purely felightful.

The smaller half amp Hornby power pack barely moved it, so I swapped in a one amp MRC pack and it ran fine. Then it stopped and
wouldn't run at all. I took it apart, the motor turned freely, and applying power directly to the motor contacts variously caused a hum,
with or without the lights flickering on. Compressed air was blown into the motor, I was thinking maybe some particle of metal found
its way into the interior of the rugged looking motor, and this produced an effect where the motor turned for a few seconds before
quitting again. Then it fairly burst into flames and smoke issued forth. It is quite hard to see into the motor, and it is held together
by rivets, thus decreasing the hope of getting it apart and back together in a satisfactory manner. The point of ignition might appear
to be in some kind of brush mechanism and the entire unit appears to be now defunct now and forever. The gearing appears to be
nice solid brass gears, but in such a manner that trying to install another motor is unlikely.

Having put in a fair amount of effort to build up the bus-scape I shall have to go back to trolling eBay for a likely replacement of
the bus.

OUCH !!!
If the bus is a true copy of the Eheim/Brawa bus then it may have one of these types of motor.

http://home.kpn.nl/helde862/Eheim/eheim.htm

Go to "Busses" page 3 (next , next) to see motors.

The top three are the type with a field coil ( not magnet) which stops them reversing ) for AC or DC and the lower one has the permanent magnet with diodes for the same reason.
These are sometimes available on the European Ebay sites but I have rarely seen the Japanese version for sale even complete .

Good luck with finding a replacement.
Regards, Colin.

I found another site covering Trolley busses which may be of interest.
Your Japanese bus is shown under "Trolley bus Silvine" about 2/3 rds of the way down.

https://www.cuccioloazzurro.com/en/i-fi ... nda-parte/

I remembered seeing trolley busses in Derby and on my route into the city there still exists the turning circle at the end of one of the routes !

Regards, Colin.

Thank you, Colin, for the info. I ended up determining that motor had fried and purchased another
entire set, NOS, at less cost than replacing just the bus or motor. It works well enough, except I am
having issues getting the steering to align properly. The previous bus easily amended to a simple tweak,
this one is being more stubborn.

I used to go to school on a trolly bus when I was a kid in North London, cost a penny in old money and at Wood Green there was a turning circle. The conductor pulled a lever on one of the posts that held the over head wires which redirected the connecting arms from the main route into the circle just like a set of points on a railway but sometimes the timing between driver and conductor was not in sync.The driver would turn into the circle but the arms carried on still connected to the main route until they were wrenched off by the bus going in a different direction which made them dance all over the place and the bus coming to an abrupt halt with no power. Great long bamboo poles with a hook on the end were carried in tubes under the buses which were then slid out by the driver and conductor, they then had the task of fishing for the arms up in the air and reconnecting them to the correct wires while traffic started building up behind the bus. Rather stressful for those fellows but very entertaining for us kids. Happy Days. I also saw a crane jib on the back of a lorry hit a railway bridge at Harringay Arena which destroyed the overhead wires with an almighty bang and flash as all the wires came down. Every bus on the route just stopped in both directions for lack of power which caused utter chaos for miles up and down the high street.
Sorry to have rambled on a bit just memories of riding on trolly busses humming along the roads.
Puddles