Building a Hi-Railer

Building a Hi-Railer

by Michael Scherpenberg

March 2016

I have been a train fan for as long as I can remember. At age two I got a Lionel O gauge set and a year later I was gifted with several HO train sets the following Christmas. As I got older, I got into bigger scales. I later went on to inherit my father’s S scale American Flyer trains that were his when I was old enough to take care of them and in my teens ventured into G scale.

Owning a ridable scale train had always been a dream of mine. I knew little about the hobby and as I began exploring the internet to learn more a few things became clear; it was very expensive and the size and weight of the equipment was going to be a big challenge even if I could afford something.

Further research showed me that in my state and the surrounding area was pretty much exclusively 7-1/2 inch gauge. Something like an F unit was not only going to be out of my price range at well over $10,000 but at seven feet long and several hundred pounds I would have neither a means of loading it or transporting it.

It was around 2007 when I finally took the dive and decided that I was serious about getting into the live steam hobby. This was still a few years before the Galloping Goose kits became readily available. The cheapest entry level engine I could find was a featureless box essentially. It was nice because it didn’t require a riding car, but it didn’t resemble anything “real life.” It did however, give me an idea. My ideal train, or in this case rail vehicle, would be about three feet long and resemble something found in the real world. It also had to be light enough to be lifted and fit in a small SUV. I was not about to purchase a trailer and I couldn’t afford to upgrade my car to something bigger.

I decided a hi-railer, or highway/rail vehicle was an ideal solution. I live by a mainline track of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad and for years had seen various maintenance equipment on the track including pickup trucks and other highway vehicles with special wheels that let them run on railroad tracks. Making such a vehicle would mean that I wouldn’t need to purchase additional train cars and I could sit right on top of it without a riding car.

There were two problems with my initial plan, however. There was no place to put the batteries and a pickup would be too small to sit on. Then another idea occurred to me. What if I used a delivery truck instead? I began to do some research and found that while not common, such a thing had been done before in the real world. I looked around and tried to find a small van-type vehicle to model and found a European style van that was approximately the size of a Matchbox die cast car.

I began looking around for the parts to set the project in motion and found a conversion kit that was offered by Roy Stevens of Ride Trains. The initial frame he offered was designed to take a Thomas the Tank Engine ride-on toy for children and convert it to run on 7-1/2 inch gauge track. I contacted him and asked if he could extend the frame to 3 feet long. He told me that he was actually considering offering a speeder body for his frame so that adults could use it.

The basic frame itself had coupler pockets already mounted with open wheels and a 1/3 horsepower motor that was chain driven. All that was needed to finish it was a body, batteries and a controller. Ride Trains sells and recommends Dimension Engineering’s 25A motor controller (SYREN-25). This control board is versatile and capable of working both from radio control and a wired remote control. Over the years, I have found the board to work well for this hobby and the few times I have had the board burn out, Dimension has been great about sending out a new one when I returned the old one without any questions or hassles.

The next challenge was to build a body. While I have some experience with electrical work, I knew nothing about welding and fabricating and realized I was going to need to outsource. At the time Ride Trains had not developed one and I really wanted to make it look like a delivery van. After checking around, I found a local shop that dealt with metal and concrete work. They had no prior experience in fabricating anything like this before but agreed to take on the project. The builder provided me with some 3-D CAD drawings based on the tiny van I’d provided for reference. After a few minor revisions, they set to work building the body and a few weeks later, I got the completed rail vehicle.