Can Motors for Mantua Locomotives

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Model Power purchased the assets of Mantua and now manufacture some of the Mantua items:

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

History of N Scale: Railroad Books, Toys, and Trains: to 1,200 sites:

Go to:

They sell can motors specifically intended to replace the old Mantua open frame motors.

CNJ999

Minor gloat. Back while Mantua was still in business I got a can motor repower kit from their parts dept. It fit into a Mantua Pacific with no hassles. I took the trouble to test Pacific's before and after performance. With the stock open frame Pittman motor lowest speed was about 5 scale mph (not too shabby). The can motor could do 0.01 scale mph. That's creeping forward tie by tie. The kit wasn't very fancy, just the motor and a cast Zamac motor mount, and it was advertised to fit most of the Mantua steamers. The motor mount allowed a drop in, no filing, drilling, or milling installaton. You might check with Walthers for the kits. I coulda swore I saw the kit in the '07 Walthers catalog a few weeks ago, but I couldn't find it again when I looked this morning. To swap in just any old can motor, like from NWSL, all you need do is find one small enough to fit. Check the shaft diameter. If the shaft diameter doesn't match up you will need a new worm to fit the new shaft. And you will need to make a motor mount out of something. Brass bar stock perhaps.

David Starr

Helix Humpers . . .

look at items 160-163 or so

Can motors won't fit into a Mantua you will have to use open pole ones.

You can surf over to here:

and see if what they have to offer is what you need. They have a lot of replacement parts and such for Mantua/Bowser/Varney locos. I think most of their parts can be bid on at eBay auctions, but you can also ask them to quote you a price on an order. HTH......TH in TX

Sagami from NWSL. Mashima. Both these brands are top quality conventional can motors, although Mashima also does some excellent open frame motors. The size is going to be dependent upon the space available inside the loco body. Width is probably the most important, but the largest diameter armature/motor that will fit the particular model, but probably the original motor's height (ignoring brushes and mounts) will set the maximum. (each step up in armature diameter (gen.2mm) adds about 50% in torque and reduces operating revs by a similar amount) I personally prefer to fit a slightly shorter motor with a flywheel rather than the maximum length motor. (for any given diameter of armature the torque will aproximately be in proportion to the pole length)

I also prefer to fit a NWSL gearbox and universal rather than mounting a worm to the motor shaft.

Sorry I can't be specific about precise motor loco combinations because I no longer have any of the converted Mantua locos in my collection.

Regards, Greg.P.

In many cases, Helix Humpers do require some work to the boiler casting to get them to fit. This isn't as hard as it might sound though... I bought a rotary file at my local hardware store and used it in my drill press. First, I drilled out a lot of the excess material then went to work with the rotary file. Even with this very crude set-up, I had most of the work done in an hour or so.

Don't get a small rotary grinding stone though... they will fill up almost immediately with metal and become worthless.

dlm

DM:

How is the performance with the HH? I have two old Mantua engines and one yet-unbuilt kit, and I am thinking of springing for the upgrade - one of the PM-1's has a bent shaft anyway.

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track, a wet basement, and some plans

I can't say. I never really installed one. What I did was to put a Mikado boiler on a 2-6-6-2 logger chassis. To do that, I needed to remove some of the boiler material. That is where my experience in that area came from.

I've never seen an HH unit, only pictures. But some of them almost look like they have a combination flywheel and worm gear. They have a web site that does have pictures of most of their products. You can find them doing a Google search. It is www.alliance or something like that with their extension after that.

dlm

Isn't mantua out of business?

- An illuminating insight into the mess that is Wikipedia, from Wikipedia Review

Model Power is reproducing some of their stuff...

dlm

DM:

And of course Mantua & Tyco produced such a huge quantity that original stuff is still VERY plentiful on Ebay and at train shows... thoughts of those who price-tag some of this L@@K RARE stuff notwithstanding.

Has anybody out there sprung for one of the Mantua Classics models yet, so they can tell us what sort of changes MP might have made? I'm wondering if these have can motors now, since they're probably cheaper than knockoff Pittmans.

Cordially yours: Gerard P. President, a box of track and some plans.