What did you do to your trains today?

Thanks to my newfound "ability" to bypass triangle screws, I had a look inside the pre-Plarail motorised Chuggers since I wanted to see what gearing they used (and how they can free wheel despite having a push button for the motor). Like TrackMaster 2, the whole range shared the exact same chassis with the only difference being the texture and colour(s) of the button. Unsurprisingly for the time, they were 'all' found to have been stored with the batteries they had when they were last played with; Koko had a custom "pack" I made with two AAAs taped to each other to make her faster than Wilson and Brewster. Their motor terminals were fine, but the sound modules in the shells had corroded LR44s that had to be forced out with screwdrivers. While Wilson and Koko's modules would likely work again with the corrosion removed, one of Brewster's terminals fell off and the plastic under one battery broke. Various magnets I tried were too weak and I had to unscrew it to push them out through the other side.



After discarding all the forgotten batteries, I took Wilson's chassis apart to do what I was going for. In terms of construction, it could be roughly described as a mix of the Flat and Thomas drive units with a (detachable) wired C compartment, vertically mounted motor, two screws for the shell instead of one, no activation tab for stop/gos and no weights. I managed to open most of it except the side where the gears are, but one thing I could tell was it has a spring gear that engages when the button is down and protrudes from the side; just like a Plarail DU. Even the driving wheels are nearly compatible but have an incorrect gear. The other side revealed an odd-looking button that looks like a modified slide switch, rather than a loose mechanical assembly with metal contacts. I reckon the gear train is similar to that to the Thomas type, albeit quieter like the Clam Shell and the similar units used until 2014/15. Even though I couldn't access the main thing I wanted to see, it was still fun to get a proper look at how this range works.