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New DCC Friendly list for Kato. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qRGTOaq-4F89xph3ZxL5iKxM5jptkeoNw77t3X-STY4/edit?usp=drivesdk If you have new data or updates, please reply here and I will incorporate the changes Please keep replies to just updates, if you have installation issues/questions, please start a thread for that model. Thanks, Ed

I came home from Japan with a bunch of EM13 decoders and an 800 and Sunrise. The shopkeeper that I could install DCC on the trains and I presumed that it was a drop in EM13 like all the other trains. When I got home and opened it up I was met with a surprise which was that there was no drop in. Can I hardwire to EM13 to the pickups or do I need to get another decoder?

Poppondetta produces some trains however due to its obscurity there is no info on how to install DCC or if there is any decoder that fits it. Here is the link: https://maker.popondetta.com/maker/?p=555

Hello, I’m getting ready to convert my only other Tomix train to DCC, a single KiHa 40. Opening it up, the LEDs are different from what was inside the 700 Series Shinkansen. My problem is that I don’t know which end is positive. Both the LEDs and the board are marked with a small line, visible in the photo below. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a “-“, to indicate the negative side, or just simply a visual aid for assembly at the factory. Anyone else have experience with these? I could also use suggestions for wiring and board modification. I’ll be installing a Digitrax DZ126T.

Hello, I'm yaasan from Japan. I'm developing DCC command station and related devices. I would like to introduce our great DCC sound Project "OPEN SOUND DATA". This project provides Japanese train sound for free of charge! These sound data requires ESU's LokSound V4 and 5 series as you know. If you have ESU's lokprogrammer and LokSound decoders, you can install it now! English page: https://desktopstation.net/sounds/index_eng.html Japanese language page: https://desktopstation.net/sounds/ Also we are developing "ExpBoard" series which is installation kit for Japanese Train model (Tomix, KATO, Green Max etc.). HO scale board for KATO: https://desktopstation.net/wiki/doku.php/expboardnext18 N scale board: https://desktopstation.net/wiki/doku.php/expboardecn HO scale generic use: https://desktopstation.net/wiki/doku.php/expboardgeneral Please try OPEN SOUND DATA now! If you have a question, let me know. Thank you for interest.

I am looking to buy a decoder for my E235 I have looked through multiple forums and not found a thing, does anybody know?

Hey guys, So, after a few months of planning and thinking, it's finally time to start building this baby! Tomorrow I'll go buy all the material needed for the wooden base and in the weekend I'll start building it. This is the final layout: Since it will go into my living room, and it will be 2.40m long, it will be divided in two parts, almost in the middle, so it will be easier to handle. The base will be of plywood, 1.5cm thick, reinforced with 3x2cm frames. Since the forniture has a Wenge-like color, I'll paint the whole base of a dark color. From below, it should be something like this: The two 45 degrees corners in the front are due to the fact that the 70cm deep base will go against a 60cm deep cabinet, so I'll to cut it in order to avoid hitting my leg every time I walk by. It will go here, below the TV, on an IKEA Besta bench : The TV will limit the space above, I'll have around 30cm to play with, but it should be enough. I'll make videos detailing all the process, which will involve a lot of trials and errors I'm sure, as this is my first build, but that's the fun part! Here's the introduction video:

Hi! I’m wondering if the Kato 10-354 takes an EM-13 and FL-12? Thanks!

After the experience I got with my first layout on tables back in August, I bought some more of Ikeas Lack tables for my next thing. This time, I wanna try a different approach, as I still need my GFs aproval for some of the tables I put in the livingroom (mostly because of manouverabilty and easy of access for the couch) and try to get some general ideas what I wan't and could do. And in contrast to my FAST-Layout for Shinkansen I built last time, with a simple loop, I wan't to get point to point operations going with DCC. Features I want: - Commuter layout for 10 car trains - 2 Stations (in the operation sense, with switches and parking spaces for 5, 10 and 11 car trains) - one or multiple stops for 10 car trains - single track extension of a line continuing of one station for at leas 5 car trains - may contain bridges - may contain viaduct stations I already made a first draft of what could fit, and also have some photos of the tables setup.

While I wait for my Unitrack to arrive, I've started planning the wiring. I'm hoping someone can help with the turnouts. Please forgive me, I'm new to the hobby and I'm still learning. I'm wiring it for DCC, and I'll be using Digitrax. I'll be using occupancy detection, also Digitrax. In my track plan, each coloured section is a detection block. The purple lines show where I intend to power the tracks with terminal unijoiners (power to each detection block not shown). I intend to control the layout with TrainController. My understanding is that I do not need to isolate my turnouts (Kato #4), as long as I set them to non-power routing, with the frog set to insulated. There seems to be some confusion online about power-routing vs. non-power routing labels but I'd be setting so them so that all rails are powered, regardless of switch position. I've isolated my turnout sections, only for the purpose of occupancy detection, with a block on either side of the turnout. I'm slightly unsure about where to connect the track power for the turnout. At each end of the turnout, I have a separate detection block, which I need to isolate from the turnout. Q. If all rails are live, and the frog insulated, could I connect the power at any end of the turnout? Then I come to the double crossover, which is what has me confused. I believe that I need to power each of the 4 ends of the crossover. However, I have blocks on either side of the crossover, so I would need to isolate the double crossover from the adjacent blocks, so where would I connect the power to the crossover? I suppose I could add a short Unitrack piece (S62) on either side, then I could connect the power at the joins between the crossover and the S62, then insulate at the join between the S62 and the next piece. Unfortunately, I'm already at the edge of the layout, so I can't afford to extend the track plan. Q. Have I understood this correctly? Do I have any other options? Is it best to keep the crossover and turnouts between blocks, or can they be in the blocks? Thanks for any advice!

So I am using a DCS50K (Kato Part No. 29-119) DCC system to run my Japanese train layout. I currently am using the standard wire connectors and splitters that come with Kato track (Item No. 24-825 & 24-827). However, I am having issues with power drop and poor DCC single pick up by some of my locomotives. These wires use 22 gauge wire which is considered thin for a standard DCC power bus. I am thinking of making my own power bus using 14 gauge wire. However I need to make a custom plug so I can connect the power bus to my DCS50K. Does anyone know if you can purchase uncrimped versions of the plugs used by Kato so I can make my own power cables? If you can, what are the called and who makes them? Part number? Thank you in advance for your suggestions and help.

I'm curious if anyone has added DCC sound decoder to their Kato Shinkansen, specifically the E7 or N700A. I saw a thread on here from back in 2015 that started addressing this but it seemed to end very anticlimactically due to limitations at the time. It seems like the non-motored trailer cars for the N700A have a cavern under the floor piece with a metal weight. Since the metal strips already run through here it seems like an easy place to stash a sound decoder with a sugar cube speaker. I assume a decoder and speaker will come close to weight to the metal already there. I think the biggest question here though, has anyone ever generated sound files for any of the Shinkansen?

Just to share with you how I converted the Kato 103 series Yamanote line train to DCC. I am not claiming that this is the best, the only or even a good way of doing it but it worked! The Kato 103 series is not at all DCC friendly so it took a lot of disassembly, soldering and re-assembly, and of course adjustment of CV values. Maybe not something for the faint-hearted. For the motor car, I used a Kuehn N45, simply because it is small, can handle the motor current and it was readily available at the shop I bought it. To make sure that I got the wiring right, I marked the forward direction and left and right side of the car. The carriage needed complete disassambly and the copper strips connected to the motor needed to be bended upwards to allow soldering of the wires. Same for the left and right hand rail power busbars. I do not solder on these strips while assembled in the carriage to prevent damaging (melting) the plastic parts. Initially I had the carriage lighting simply run on rail power, as recommended by Ken Shores of the famous http://www.sumidacrossing.org. That worked fine on my N700A Shinkansen but the 103 series has large windows and the whole thing looked way to bright. However this decoder has no wire leads for interior lights. Instead I connected the white lead, normally used for the front lights, to the Kato interior LED assembly. That could easily be done because this carriage sits in the middle of the train and does not have front nor rear lights. I needed to reconfigure the front light controls to become interior lights (function mapping to F1) and adjust the dimming to a mere 30% of the full brightness. During testrun I found that the train runs way too fast. Some 350 scale-km/h easily! Real slow running was difficult. So I lowered the default start value to the very minimum and halved the max power value. Obviously this is decoder dependent. Because the decoder is quite small (and flat) it does not appear visible behind the windows. The front and rear carriages are wired up with Doehler & Haass FH05B decoders to control the head and tail lights. The Kato 103 series still has old school light bulbs for front and rear lights, assembled with diodes on a small printed circuit board. To wire the decoder to the lightbulbs, the diodes needed to be removed. To dim and control the interior lights the KATO LED assembly is wired to the Aux 1 connection of the decoder and function mapped to F1 key. Again the interior light LEDs are dimmed to 30%. Now the other carriages still had their interior light run on rail power. So these needed to get their own decoders. In this case I soldered the decoder red and black leads to the clips that power the interior lights. To do that two small holes needed to be drilled in the bulkhead in front of the LED assembly. At the right, the holes in the bulkhead are just visible (where the red and black wires run through). All decoders in the train have the same DCC address, just to make it easy to control everything at the same time. So all lights go on and off at the same time. Not sure if that is prototypical. Maybe in reality someone is walking through the train and switches on/off the lights of the carriages one by one. In that case I could reconfigure everything to turn the lights on and off in a staggered way through iTrain. The complete train (with one carriage missing because otherwise the train would be too long for my testtrack) Another thing is that with lights on, the train is obviously empty, without passengers. Maybe I should now add standing and sitting passengers, e.g. by having a PS sheet fitted with figures glued to it. Of course the figures will need to be cut at their waist to get their heads at the right level behind the windows...

Hopefully somebody already solved this riddle and can help me! I started to convert my lay-out to DCC control and doing tests with and playing around with DCC control using my N700A. Now I am at the stage to plan ahead and check how to convert my other rolling stock. I have small electric locomotive, the KATO ED75-700 (Kato 3075-3) that is not DCC friendly. In another topic I found that a similar model (the Kato 3075-1) may be fitted with the Digitrax DC163K0A. Does anybody know if this decoder may also be fitted in my 3075-3 ? Many thanks! Jan

Hello - Its been a while for me on this forum but, as you know, life gets in the way. Anyway, I recently received this 6 car set thinking i would enjoy the fact that i could drop-in the Cab and Motor DCC decoders and off we go. The motor car install did not go as planned and it was at that point i discovered Sumida Crossing describing the exact same issue - DCC Kato Ginza - which is the EM-13 does not sit properly once slid into position (that lump of metal and the nibs between the motor and the truck slot prevents a flat seating.. You can also see from the pictures that, even after trimming the EM-13 width to clear the sides, I can not get the truck back on. So it looks like i will have to wire in a decoder - possibly a small LokPilot. Anyone have any advice for wiring a motor decoder in the Ginza Series 01? Also it looks like the motor is protected by a plastic piece that i will have to remove to get to the motor contacts. Im hoping that it just pops off if anyone can verify if they've done that before. Thanks and happy motoring, Peter

I am seeking a bit of direction from the real experts amongst you! My lay-out is approaching completion with the scenery almost done and the trains running analogue. Few things still need to be completed but it is time to start wondering and thinking about the next steps: Equip my trains with DCC and operate them through a PC. There is an overwhelming amount of information available in the web, even on the forum. I have no idea where to start. The webpages of product manufacturers are overwhelming and confusing at the least. They advertise bits and pieces with datasheets without any easily comprehensible information on how to put it all together. E.g. Digikeijs and DigiTrax websites are hard to interpret. E.g. what module do you need to control the Kato turnouts? I do not have a huge lay-out. Currently there are 3 electrically separate loops with only 5-6 trains on it at any moment and only 3 driving at the same time. The photo's give an impression. I have a few dreams/wishes: I like/need to avoid complete re-wiring and partitioning of the tracks. JR style signals are controlled by the DCC system. Trains run a sort of time table automatically (by the PC) and nicely accelerate and decelerate prototypically. There is sound from the station with the JR tunes, whistles, brakes, announcements. Specific questions I have: I understand that it is nowadays possible to 'tune' the PC program such that the speedsetting of the train matches the actual speed. The software corrects for the normal differences between trains. Given that the PC sets and 'knows' the speed of the train, it continuously predicts where the train is with reasonable accuracy. This allows the PC to have a train stop at the platform without the need for train detection at every point you may decide to have your train stopped in future. Avoids a lot of wiring. Of course there is a need for a few detection points to reset the position calculations. a) Is my understanding correct? b) What PC software does that? What popular /affordable module(s) can be used to control the KATO 2-wire turnouts? They all seem made for 3-wire 2-coil turn-outs. Where can I find Japanese style signals that can be controlled by the DCC system? What about sound, either built into the KATO trains, or by having small speaker fitted under the station to have the PC generate the appropriate sounds (whistle, doors, announcements, the famous JR tunes, etc.) ? Are PC programs available that allow that to be added? Any help or directions y'all can give?

I recently received the Kato N700A 4-car set and installed the DCC decoders in the cab cars and the power car. I was considering adding a DCC sound decoder into the non-powered car. I believe there should be enough room under the floor plastic if I removed the metal weight. I'm curious if anyone knows of or has created any sound projects for any of the Shinkansens yet.

Does anyone know of a good website with a list of Kato Japanese locomotives and their corresponding "drop-in" decoders. All the lists I can find are only for their NA models, but I know that many of the light boards used in NA models are also used in the Japanese models and therefore there are compatible decoders out there for many Japanese models as well. Thanks

Hi I've bought some Kato Unitrack to run my US HO and UK 00 scale stuff on. I'd like to buy a Bachmann Dynamis for my DCC equipped locos to run on, but I'm stumped on how I can connect the track to the controller? Presumably the Kato wire only fits the Kato controller.

Hi every one which dcc decoder I can use with KATO EF57?

Hello all, I have been adding the detail parts and dcc'ing a Kato ef58 that i've had for some time. When I took the body off, I noticed that there are guides above the cabs for tail lights, as well as the headlights. Shining a light through the body confirmed that the light was delivered to the lenses for the tail lights, so I set about adding some leds to illuminate the tail lights, as there is space to do so. Inside the ef58. LEDs can be added to the grey box at either end of the model. I used 3mm LEDs, pre wired with a resistor. Grey box removed. The guide for the headlight lens goes through the gap on the left, you need to drill a hole on the right hand side for the light to pass through.

Hello All, Having a break from the kiha 40 build, I looked at dcc'ing a kato dd51. I had not removed the body from the dd51, just looked up on the net about dcc for the dd51 and from what I saw, the loco was not dcc ready, but some had used the circuit board for the ef65 to dcc the dd51. So, I ordered a circuit board. A bit later I got round to taking the body of the dd51 and found that it was already fitted with the same circuit board as an ef65, complete with 8 pin socket! With the ordered circuit board already in the post, I got round to thinking what else I could use it for. I have a number of Tomix ho models, non of which are dcc ready. Some time ago I got a mint second hand ef81, and with it being a similar shape to the ef65, I thought that swapping the Tomix circuit board for the Kato one should be possible, and am pleased to report it is. The original board is easy to remove, as nothing is soldered to it. Unplug the wires, remove the clips for the motor connectors (keep the clips), and then unclip the board from the chassis. Next, remove the clips on the chassis that are for holding the original board in place, as the Kato board will sit on top of the plastic dividers each side of the motor. The motor terminals attach to the Kato board by the number 15 on the cutting mat, place the contacts on the underside of the board and use the clips from the original board to secure the contacts in place. The wires from the pickups attached to where number 16 is on the mat. Also, please note that on the left hand side of the motor, you need to remove some of the plastic in the middle of the divider, this is to allow clearance for the gold coloured component on the left side of the Kato board. Position the board with the underside of the dcc socket (right hand side on board) on the flywheel side of divider. It's tight, but the socket will be clear of the flywheel.

Hi Guys, I promised to upload these weeks ago in the chat room but i have been so busy with work.Here we go, i have fitted a Microace 0 Shinkansen with 3 Lenz silver mini decoders, one for the motor unit and then one in each end unit for the directional lights, plus also in the motor unit i have fitted a Uhlenbrock sound module and Zimo speaker, people may as why have i fitted this way,i prefer using sound module as to sound decoders, they have benefits over decoders as in if the decoder blows then your only replacing a small reasonably cheap decoder rather than a expensive sound decoder. The sound that i have used are as close to what i can find to the shinkansen after comparing sounds with the guys from Imon models in tokyo,We spent a whole afternoon comparing sounds and they came to the conclusion that these are more or less as close as possible. Since japan is not really into DCC in a big way it is hard to find sound files. I have done my best with the sounds and the most important thing is i am happy so please no tying me to the stake and flaming me. Hope you enjoy what is possible with a little fiddling with these models. Metro this is my Kato 10-1288 fitted much the same way as the microace using decoder and sound module, this model still has some work to do to with the lights and also need to fit passengers in both models. Hope you enjoy. Metro

Hello, I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread dedicated to adding DCC to HO models. Thought I'd put it in the HO section, rather than the DCC section as it's dedicated to HO. I have been building a small collection of HO stock for several years now, in preparation for when I can eventually build a layout to run them on. Although it's still likely to be some time before I can build a layout, it would be nice to know how to dcc models, especially as quite a number of Japanese models are not at all dcc friendly! To get the ball rolling, I recently purchased a second hand Kato de10. When I put it on the rollers to test it, the lights came on but the motor didn't run, so I took the body off to investigate, and was surprised to find an 8 pin dcc socket on the pcb. As space it tight in the model, to fit a dcc chip I would remove the weight from the body, under the long bonnet, to allow space for the chip. I would stick a small piece of card to the chassis, on the silver coloured area at the bottom of the photo, to ensure the chip will sit clear of the mechanism. The wires will need to be arranged so not to get in the way of the LED, and the plug simply inserted into the socket. I have not yet installed a chip, but will post some step by step photo's when I eventually do. Please feel free to add your own advice for other models, it would be good to have a 'catalog' of dcc installs, especially for those of us with little or no knowledge about these things.

The standard rule of thumb for working with Japanese model trains from what I read in the forums is to never exceed 12 volts, does this only apply for N scale J-trains or does this also apply for HO scale J-trains as well? If so, then I might have some trouble finding a DCC system that is compatible with North American models and J-models.