I just love my trolleys. I have a whole stable of trolleys, from old to new. One thing that most of these trolley sets have in common is they don’t run very well. Working with N-Scale, these units are just too darn small to accommodate flywheels.

Because there are no flywheels, they have no momentum at all. If they hit a dirty spot on the track they stall. And then I have to give them a little push. This isn’t a big deal, but it is annoying. Because of this continuing situation, I set about to make my Kato two car modern trolley sets run better, and I’ll show you how to do it.

My reasoning is that if I can increase the number of track pickup points, then these units won’t be so affected by momentary loss of power. What worked out great with the Kato trolleys is that the trailer car had power pickup to run the interior lighting. I figured all I had to do was electrically connect the two cars and it should run MUCH better. My philosophy is: There are NEVER too many power pickups!

The first question was how to separate the two cars. The couplers are an odd drawbar that didn’t want to come separate. To solve this, I simply removed the front truck set from the trailer. At this point, I very carefully pried off the shell, which exposed to inside seating.

From here, I removed the row of seating which reveled the power strips that connect into the power from the wheels. I now need to drill two small holes through the row of seating to run the new wires.

At this point, I put a small spot of solder on the power strips in preparation for the wires. I also “tinned” (pre soldered) the ends of the wires to make the soldering easier. A word of caution here: Be VERY careful not to get the power strip too hot. If you do, you will melt the plastic underneath that will cause damage. Once the wires are attached, run them through your new holes and replace the seating.

Now I needed to drill a hole just big enough in the end of the trailer to allow the wires out. I chose a spot low in the center of the door that worked out just fine. I then ran the wires through the hole, and replace the shell onto the frame. It’s now time to move onto the power car.

On the power car I started off by removing the shell and then I removed the row of seating as before. You will once again see power strips, but a bit different than with the trailer. As before, I also need to drill two holes in the row of seating for the new wires.

A word about wire is in order here. To make these trolleys run well, you need the softest wires available. If the wires are too stiff, it will make the cars not track well and possibly derail. I buy an “ultra soft” wire from Loy’s Toys (a DCC outlet), but I’m sure you can find it at any good electronics supply store.

As before, I drilled a hole in the back of the car body for the new wires. I ran the wires through the hole in the body and also through the row of seats. Be VERY careful to keep track of which wire goes on the left side and which goes to the right. If you get them backwards, you will have a “dead short” and nothing will work.

I soldered the wires into the power strips, replaced the row of seating, and replaced the car body. At this point take a moment to make sure both car bodies are back into their original positions and straight.

Finally, I needed to connect the two cars. I had to play with the wires a bit to figure out the correct length for the proper spacing of the cars. I then replaced the truck set for the trailer car.

And now for the big test! How will this trolley unit run with the increased capacity of power pickups? I put if on my layout, and it worked great! I could finally run this trolley set at a realistically slow speed and it didn’t stall once. Connecting together the power from the two cars turned a good-looking model into a great runner.