Can You Magnetize Bike Chains?

Axel Slingerland

Axel Slingerland

Blues Rocker
Location
10 Miles North of Weedpatch
When I was a kid, my Dad had this massive HO Scale model railroad in our basement. It took up three rooms and had "Tunnels" that went through walls to connect the sections. I was always interested in that, but never had anywhere to make one.

His layout had 30 some trains on it, and there were roads with non-moving cars on them. I always wondered is there was a way to make those cars move. Now you can. There's a company named Magnarail that sells these chain systems to pull vehicles around. But like many good things, there's a down side. These things are very expensive.

Mr. DIY that I am, I've been trying off and on to think of a way to do that in a similar way, but for much less. I saw a video awhile back where a guy took some gear cogs like those used in a gear cassette for a bike and screwed them on a piece of plywood and laid the chain around the cogs, one of which he mounted a crank on. He put a small magnet on the chain, placed a piece of poster board over the cogs, and put a magnet on the bottom of a HO Scale car. And cracked the crank and the car followed the route of the chain. But he was having having difficulty keeping the magnet on the chain.

So that made me curious... Can you magnetize master links or other links for bike chains?
 

It depends on the type of steel the chain is made of. If a magnet sticks to it, then it can probably be magnetized. But, it wouldn't be very strong and probably wouldn't pull your car. How does Magnarail do it?
 
Well, first off, I'm basically talking about 1:87 HO Scale plastic model cars, and they don't weigh very much. They typically have metal bodies on either metal, or at times, plastic frames. The starter kit for the Magnorail system basically consists of a plastic chain with embedded magnets, some vehicles and a motor to pull the chain. These start anywhere from $150 and up. So if you were a die hard model railroader like my Dad was, and used these systems, you could end up spending a ton of money. But my Dad didn't really buy that much.

He made about 70% of the things he put on his layout by recycling things he found. Log cabins made out of chop sticks, buildings make out of scrap wood, etc. He had to have paints, trains, tracks, and some plastic stuff like bridges, water towers, tunnel entrances, etc. But he was a craftsman and would make as much of it as he could. But even back then when things were a lot cheaper, he still spent a lot of money. It's an expensive hobby.

So along those lines I was wondering if you could make your own "Magnorail" system, you could save a lot of money. In theory it is possible by doing was I said in my first post, but I was thinking if you could take a steel bike chain, and magnetize the whole thing it could eliminate all the little magnets on the chain. Then of course, you would still need to add small magnets to the bottoms of the cars.

By the way, you forgot "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy!"
 

Axel Slingerland said:
By the way, you forgot "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy!"
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But that would be a lie. I'm a suburban boy.

There are some pretty strong little magnets. If you put one of them on the car you might not need a magnet on the chain. That is if the chain is attracted to magnets, and it probably would be unless it's stainless. It could be fun to experiment with.
 
I have always been interested in model railroading, but never had the time to go all in, which this family did. This outfit is in Middlefield, Ohio, which is east of Cleveland by about an hour or so. The narrator says it’s smack dab in the middle of Amish country, but there are larger sets of Amish elsewhere in Ohio. It’s a small burg, much like a rural town out in the middle of nowhere.

If you ever get to that area, check it out.

 
Grampa Don said:
But that would be a lie. I'm a suburban boy.

There are some pretty strong little magnets. If you put one of them on the car you might not need a magnet on the chain. That is if the chain is attracted to magnets, and it probably would be unless it's stainless. It could be fun to experiment with.
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It's not a lie, it's an omission. In his song that name, John Denver sang "Sun's coming up. Cakes on the griddle. Life ain't nothin but a funny funny riddle" and the rest of that phrase is "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy!" John Denver is the Country Boy. But even then that not the whole stanza from the song.

What I had in mind was magnetizing the entire chain somehow, such as making a magnetizer /demagnetizer out of an old electric motor. I just don't know how to do that.
 
911 said:
I have always been interested in model railroading, but never had the time to go all in, which this family did. This outfit is in Middlefield, Ohio, which is east of Cleveland by about an hour or so.
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I would love to go there, but my traveling days are over. I used to get to go to the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago a lot when I was a kid. They have a huge HO layout there.


I haven't seen their layout for decades, since about 1970 or so. I would love to see this version of it.
 
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Axel Slingerland said:
When I was a kid, my Dad had this massive HO Scale model railroad in our basement. It took up three rooms and had "Tunnels" that went through walls to connect the sections.
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Help me to understand how the train entering another room can be appreciated if you can't even see it.
 
In each of the three rooms, separate controllers ran all but the two trains on one pair of tracks in that section independently. The other two tracks were the ones that go through the wall tunnels and ran through all three sections. Those trains were controlled by a pair of controllers in the center room. Those had the longest stretches of track, and had the longest trains in the layout. His entire layout had about 400 feet of tracks, not all of it active, give or take whatever he was doing at any given time.

To covert that to scale miles divide the length in inches by 87.1. 400 feet of track is 4,800 inches, divided by 87.1 = 55.10 scale miles. With the controllers he had, he could run 8 trains at a time, 2 from each of the 3 sections and the 2 long runs. Those trains were always essentially the same. The others could be switched out to run other shorter trains with different cars, etc.

I can only imagine what he would do with all the new technology available to build layouts with now. And I bet there's just no way I could even afford to build 10% of what he did. I've often wondered what the new owner thought about it when my sister sold his house. I asked her what she did with the layout and got the answer I fully expected. "What train layout?" That told me she never even went into the basement of the house.

Typical... Personally, if I was going to sell the house that all of my brothers and sisters and I lived in for years, I grew up in that house, I would have checked everything. And I do mean everything. You never know what you might find in a craftsman's house....
 
Inept said:
Help me to understand how the train entering another room can be appreciated if you can't even see it.
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It's like flying a kite over the tree line. If it's beyond your sight what's the use in flying it that far? Some guy at the beach did that a couple of summers ago. He had enough string for it to fly to the moon (OK a slight exagerration) so he let the wind take it over the road, over the trees, and beyond sight past the houses. He couldn't see it. If he kept it within sight he would have noticed the downdraft and he could have given it a tug and brought it back but all he saw was that the line went limp and he never saw it again. The kite crashed, God knows where.
 
Axel Slingerland said:
It's not a lie, it's an omission. In his song that name, John Denver sang "Sun's coming up. Cakes on the griddle. Life ain't nothin but a funny funny riddle" and the rest of that phrase is "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy!" John Denver is the Country Boy. But even then that not the whole stanza from the song.
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Sorry to upset you. I guess I should have included the song's entire lyrics. Just put me on ignore.
 
Inept said:
It's like flying a kite over the tree line. If it's beyond your sight what's the use in flying it that far? Some guy at the beach did that a couple of summers ago. He had enough string for it to fly to the moon (OK a slight exagerration) so he let the wind take it over the road, over the trees, and beyond sight past the houses. He couldn't see it. If he kept it within sight he would have noticed the downdraft and he could have given it a tug and brought it back but all he saw was that the line went limp and he never saw it again. The kite crashed, God knows where.
Click to expand...
Inept said:
Help me to understand how the train entering another room can be appreciated if you can't even see it.
Click to expand...
It is the "Jack-in-the-Box" principle: i.e. the child's toy, a box that is cranked and "Jack" pops out...surprising the child. Or love. You know it is there, and the anticipation of 'seeing' it again is fun...and if it doesn't show up again..you go looking for it and make it happen again.
 
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