Power wise I'd strongly prefer a coreless motor and I'll probably put some massive capacitors in the wiring since the limited pickup will induce jittering.

Unfortunately I don't think there's anything I can do about this other than possibly collect pickup from each and every car's trailing truck and run microwires or contacts between each car(yucky for portability and setup). Ideally this will also provide pickup (dimple cup collectors preferred for low drag) giving me a nice long pickup wheelbase, if limited points. trailing truck: either scavenged from a preexisting steamer or 3D printed. It will also already have a gear on it, which is aces. This serves me because I need maximum pulling power from my one driving axle, and I want it to be big.

I'm pretty much convinced I'm going to use a steam engine axle with traction tires. This will provide pickup (crucial since this thing will be both light and starved for wheels), and guide it into turns. It'll be covered by the locomotive's skirt so looks won't matter. Forwards truck: probably a Kato passenger truck with a basic pivot in the frame. To make this easier to read I'll bullet-point it out. A two-axle leading truck at the extreme forwards end of the engine (covered by skirts), a single fixed driving axle at the extreme rear, and a single-axle trailing truck hanging out the back for the cars to ride upon. To make things easy I'm going to set it up as a 4-2-2. Since it has no wheels in the ingame model, I'm going to make up my own arrangement. However for now I'm just focusing on the locomotive since the cars will be extremely simple: 3D print the body and slap the trailing truck on (probably 3D printed with a Fox axle). I'm assuming it works like a United Aircraft Turbo Train one trailing axle that the next car hooks on to. Now the cars do have two large wheels at their tailing end, but no couplers of any sort are visible. Firstly, the ingame model has no wheels of any sort. Now this will be an interesting challenge.

One thing to note first: I have access to a 3D printer and basic Dremel tools. With that aside, I've decided to make something that I guarantee nobody has ever made before in N scale: the Razor Train from the computer game Half-Life 2: I'm the son of George Johnsen, who is the creator of Deluxe Innovations and Chairman of the N Scale Enthusiast. Greetings! My name is Zachary Liebreich-Johnsen.

Half life on a rail