Season's Greetings to all,

Trying to verify proper operating voltage for vintage Atlas HO's. Should they not be ran above 12 V. Please advise. :confused:

thanks

Mike

Most people run their cars at 18V, but 12 is ok, you just won't get top end speed. Makes crashing less of a danger.

Mr. Coney's Slotcar Museum of Atlas
http://www.mrconey.com/slot_car_museum/atlas_sitemap.html
lists a
1252-598 Roadway Power unit
and a
1260-598 Roadway Power Pack
The pictures of these indicate that they delivered 18 V DC at 1 amp and at 1/2 amp respectively (judging from the printing on the pack).
There was also a 1260-A Toy Transformer, that delivered 12 V DC at 1/2 amp, but that appears to me to have been an accessory transformer/power pack.

So it looks like the cars were designed to be run on 18 V, but of course DLW is right, they will work on 12 volts, just with a lower top speed and more controllability.
-- D

Thanks for the info. I had run some of these years back with no trouble at 12 V, but had thought I had seen somewhere recently something about 6V motors. Don't want to burn anything out. Would anyone kn ow anything about what cars had the lead weights. Little of an oddity.

thanks

mike

Something to think about... these cars (and in fact, ANY inline cars from the 60s such as Lionel, Bachman, and i assume Eldon and Tyco S) do NOT like the 90 and 100 ohm controllers that lots of us have started to use for Tjets. They'll work with them, but you need to go about half a trigger pull just to get the car rolling, and then you've only got the other half or less to adjust speed, if that makes sense. I find that they work better with a 40 or 60 ohm controller....

--rick

Rick,

Yea, I sorta prefer the old Atlas style ( I assume 40 to 60 ohm) plunger controller. I found the old Aurora Russkits would wear out the reostat(?) windings pretty quickly. Still have them plus a few more. I have a small Life-Like setup now, mainly for testing / eval., and your right, 1/2 to start, other half to control. To touchy. Guess maybe I need to break out the old Aurora or Atlas track.

Rick,

Would you know if an old Tyco S can would fit the Atlas C121 chassis? Trying to research parts origin.