Magnorail™ on the St. Frank Urban Layout

Rolling MagnoCars

This is a quick page to inform those interested in how I use Magnorail ™ plastic chains underneath my city streets.

Planning worksheet

I’ve created street plan in Photoshop and I can print out new copies if I mess up the street somehow. I’m on my third version of paper card macadam. I’m using Google Street view to grab photos of buildings and then use Photoshop to clean them up. I’m creating 3D versions of buildings in Blender, and then I use Pepakura to unfold the models for printing. Sometimes I use a Cricut vinyl cutter to cut out all the windows for me.

Anyway, here is a movie demonstrating the Magnorail cars in action.

The little N scale cars don’t even have real wheels, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The Bus and the USPS box truck do have wheels that turn. As you can see, I use cylindrical magnets inside each car. The magnets are aligned North to the left and South to the right and match up to the square magnets in the plastic shuttle links in the Magnorail chain below the street. To make sure I have the chain magnets correct, I stick them to the vehicles first and insert them into the chain with the cars pointing the right way.

I very slowly carve out a rectangular hole in the bottom of each vehicle. If I’m using a 5mm magnet, I can make the hole 5mm wide but I have to make sure it’s not quite 5mm from front to back. I’ll make the front and back edges beveled in order to get the magnet low enough to touch the street. If the magnet is rolling, there is very little stutter as it moves along.


The magnet fits in the front seat nicely. There is still room to add a driver.
These cars are cheap, but look pretty good. I can afford to get lots of them.
The magnet must rest in a trough so they sit on the street.
I’ve added a little plank on top because there is too much room inside and the magnet can twist around without it.
This bus has bigger wheels that spin. I had to add a plate underneath to get the magnet on the ground.
A simple sedan.
Many things can be animated.
I’m using a shorter magnet so it fit in between the I beams in the chassis. These magnets are plenty strong, but because they roll there is little drag on the motor and I can get many cars on the road.
This placement is a little too far back so sometimes the front of the truck swings sideways.
I can actually just set the truck on top of a 5mm cylinder magnet in front of the front wheels and that works well, but you can see the magnet.
This page is just a small worksheet and is not the actual layout.
A preview of things to come. Rapid transit is waiting in the tunnel under Mercado St.
Might look a little like this.
This mechanism is upside down. It’s my own Magnochain. This is just a sneak preview, more to come…
Magnorail™ trolley test with N scale Cable Car. The original magnet here is a thin donut shaped disk under the front bench seats. I had to remove it to motorize the car.