Collection: Locomotive Drive Replacements

These drives are designed to make use of the existing model equipped worm drive.  Installation typically takes less than an hour. No need to pull apart and reinstall drivers, no fancy tools or skills required. Just remove the boiler and existing motor and screw in the new drive. Connect the wires and you are done. Oh! and these units are very DCC friendly! Drives are also available with machined brass flywheels on request.

Many of the early HOn3 and small HO locos had worm drives with a 24:1 reduction. Small motors of the day turned at 12000RPM so at 12VDC, the RPMs on the axles was 500RPM. This translates into a max scale speed (for an HO 38” driver) of 65MPH!  Now sure, you can apply less volts to the rails, but then you are only using 1/3 of the available speed and this also reduces pulling power and invites motor stalling.  (As an aside, the average speed of the Durango & Silverton trains is 12MPH while the Cumbres & Toltec is 14MPH!). Once the replacement drive is installed, your max scale speed of 22MPH with three times the pulling power and very slick low speed crawling for switching.

In the works are more designs for replacement drives for DC-60 motors, as well as for Key Imports models.

Lastly, we welcome your input and if you have a request, drop an email to leadvilledesigns@gmail.com. We happily take on custom installs!