How did you improve your rolling stock?

[Kiha66]

Those look great squid, which part are they?  I may have to pick some up soon to update my fleet of older kato 115s.

[railsquid]

Kato Z06-0227, ostensibly for Kiha 40s but work pretty well as generic EMU connectors for later JNR stock.

 

 

[railsquid]

And another evening spent playing "hunt the flying tiny plastic part"...

 

Tomix EF65-2000 series (parts attached) by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Plastic Tomix pantographs replaced with proper Kato ones.

 

Cab background details by "N Koya".

[Pauljag900]

 Permanant pastime for me every time I go in the shed!👍😂😂

[Sheffie]

Metal pantographs look so much nicer!

Did you need to drill or glue them?

[railsquid]

6 hours ago, Sheffie said:

Metal pantographs look so much nicer!

Did you need to drill or glue them?

 

No, they just push in.

 

You do need to drill holes for the radio and GPS antennae, for which Tomix provides a plastic template which slots onto the roof.

[Sheffie]

Well, hmm. 

I noticed that the locomotive I’ve been complaining about has in fact thrown off one of its traction tyres. 

 

Re-seating that wasn’t really difficult, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the steadiness of the engine. So I’m a bit confused. I’ll take another look with the illuminated magnifying glass 

[Kiha66]

A bad tire could very well be causing the wobble, be sure its seated all the way around and not offset.  You can try holding the loco upside down and holding a 9v battery to the tender wheels to watch the motion and see if the issue is the mechinism or the tires.

[chadbag]

I guess DCC conversions are more a rolling stock improvement than a layout activity.

 

Tonight I took an older (non-coreless) Greenmax JR 103 series (set 4417 -- 6 car Hanwa Line set) and converted it to DCC using a D&H DH10C-3 decoder.  It was a bit difficult as it has two motors in the motor car and everything is fit together really tightly.  I ended up "melting" 2 channels in an inner cover to route the wires and then used wires to connect the two motors and cut off the tabs that fed the motors from the rail power strips.  Luckily it worked first time and I did not let any magic smoke out.  I took lots of pictures and will write it up on what I did at some near point in the future.  (I should have been going to bed and not doing this tonight as 5:45am comes early).  Unfortunately there is no place to hide the decoder so you can see it through the windows if you looks.  I left 1 of the function wires long so I can later add internal lighting.  I have not yet done the end cab light boards either (waiting for some more NGDCC 2+2 bipolar function decoders).

 

 

[railsquid]

So, this EF66 from the other day...

Tomix EF66 11 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

It was one of my earlier N gauge purchases and I have never been quite happy with it, as it has never run as well as my other Tomix locos. A little bit noisy, a little bit sluggish but poor at slow running, a little bit prone to slight stalls, but nothing obviously broken, yet something not quite right. I even tried taking it back to the shop, but it ran well enough on their short test set and I was sent away with the advice to clean my track...

 

Anyway, four so years later I've finally got round to examining the bogies and determined one was running not quite freely and made a sound which put me in mind of the dreaded Farish split gear. Except no split was apparent.

 

What I did find was this:

 

Tomix EF66 bogie tower "flash" by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

A teensy bit of flash protruding into one of the slits on the bogie tower, which was catching ever so slightly on the large gear, particularly in one direction. After removing that with a scalpel, it now runs satisfactorily.

[chadbag]

Last night, instead of going to bed, I decided to crack open the Tomix EF210 (the one from the basic freight set 92491) so I could think about the DCC conversion.  I ended up doing the motor part last night.  It was relatively easy.  The only part I did not do was hook the rail power to the decoder.  Tonight I added the rail power to the decoder and  I worked on adding the front and rear headlights using the existing light boards.  It all worked, except the front light, where the problem turned out being that I had switched the positive and negative wires by accident.   I used my multi-meter to trigger the LED so I would know which was which, and then I proceeded to attach them backwards,  Once I figured that out, I swapped the wires, which also led to redoing a few solder joints etc.  In doing so, I introduced a short, which I have yet to fix.  I thought I had found it and proceeded to fix the particular spot, but testing it again still leads to a short (the programmer box keeps switching itself off / on / off / on over and over and over.   I'll continue with it tomorrow.

 

This is a random pic I took as part of it where I am resoldering some lighting wires.  It has changed a little since this pic was taken as the wiring for the lights on this end is still reversed.  If you look carefully you will see an extra wire on each end.  The body shell has a red light pipe for red rear lights but no LED.  I am extending wiring to add my own LED for red rear lights.

 

I've been taking pictures and once it works I'll write it up.

 

[Kamome]

On 2/24/2019 at 11:32 PM, railsquid said:

Cab background details by "N Koya".

They do add a little something. I can never find the ones I need for my locos so might consider making my own on illustrator. I have their set for the Cassiopeia and it looks a lot better looking in to each lit cabin.

Edited February 26, 2019 by Kamome

[Kamome]

17 hours ago, railsquid said:

A teensy bit of flash protruding into one of the slits on the bogie tower, which was catching ever so slightly on the large gear, particularly in one direction.

Like a playing card motorcycle sound for your bmx. 😂

[Sheffie]

You win some, you lose some. 

The good news is, you can now tell that this is C57-180 from any angle. 

The bad news is, it no longer has a headlight facing backwards at the top of the tender. Oh well, it didn’t light up anyway, and I have a future project for when I’m fully kitted out with magnifiers and lights and superglue 

 

[Pauljag900]

So the twighlight express slowed down and stopped,so as Mr Railsquid makes it sound so matter of course😂😂😂I thought I d take a look,tho I suspect the motor may have gone,

 

Tho looking at this I’m surprised it ran at all😂😂

Now to try and get it back together after getting the no for the motor.

[gavino200]

Cat hair?

[Pauljag900]

Not sure tbh Gavin,I have nt got a cat but I do have a dog,I think it’s just general grime and crap.

Anyway it did nt work so I ll order a new motor for it👍I ll test this one first tomorrow just to be sure.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Pauljag900

[cteno4]

Technical terms Paul are schmutz and puzz.

 

jeff

[chadbag]

I've been working on a Tomix EF210 from the basic freight set DCC installation. I started it last week and had the basic train working, but since the body shell has a red light pipe on each end for taillights, I decided I wanted to add those as well, since they did not installed from the factory.  Last night I installed a blue wire using a rectifier bridge and ran extra white and yellow wires to the opposite ends and wired up some small 0805 right angle LEDs. I stupidly forgot to solder my resister in so when I first tried it I fried the LED in about 4 seconds, since it was receiving about 12V.  I replaced the LED and put the resisters in and got it all working.  I used 30 AWG wire for the blue wire, but used a silicone sheathed version.  Between the extra thick silicone sheathing, and not so great placement (based on wire length) placement of the rectifier bridge, I had trouble getting the body shell back on.  I finally got it on but it caused something to break in the system and now nothing works.  I have some regular 30 AWG wire on order (first one they sent me was labeled blue, but was definitely black or midnight blue, which is basically black, and did not match the picture online, so they are sending me another spool) with very thing outer insulation sheathing and I will re-do the complete wiring this coming week.

 

Tonight I decided to make the last 5 of the Ersatz-EM13 decoder boards that I have using DH05C decoders.  I got them all soldered on and I checked each one.  The first 2 worked fine and I installed them in my E3 Toreiyu Tsubasa and my 923 Doctor Yellow.  The next one did not work and cased the programming box to constantly reset itself (so detecting a short).  I desoldered it and checked everything and put it back on a few times.  No go.  Finally I checked it once again with the multimeter and this time was finding some resistance from one of the motor leads to each of the other leads (other motor, both tracks, and both headlights -- in the 500 to 1775 ohm range).  So something happened.  I've asked the D&H tech support what they think that might mean.  So I put that one aside.  Then I took the next one, put it in an E7 and it worked fine. Then I took the last one and put it in my JR 321 set (10-287 which is the complete 7 car set in one, and appears to be identical to the 10-1121 / 10-1122 set -- I got the 10-287 used for a good price).  As soon as I sent any DCC command to it it would take off down the track.  I tried a few things including trying it in a JR 223-2500 but it had the same problem.  I took the board out and re-checked it and found a short between one of the track wires and one of the motor wires.  I removed the decoder, cleaned it up, and put the decoder back on the board, and installed it in the JR 321, and it works fine.  But with the two problems, it took an extra hour or three tonight to get all those done.  I've used all 10 of my EM13 boards that take the DH05C and 1 that takes a PD05A.  If the "broken" decoder is not salvageable then I will have to use another PD05A version as I think all my EM13 capable trains have either EM13 (just a few) or the JNSF EM13 replacement boards.

 

I also spent some time trying to learn how to use KiCad software to layout a sample board for the DIY lighting project.

 

 

[JR 500系]

Nothing much, just adding in TN couplers to all around and interior lights on my Kintetsu 15400 Club Tourism Kagihori go... 

 

Gotta love the green! The graphics are pretty nice too!  🙂

[chadbag]

I looked at at started planning the next round of EF210 DCC conversion with the extra tail lights.

 

In other news, I added decoders to a lot of European locomotives with decoder receptacles.

 

D&H DH14B in Minitrix (or set address etc on a few that had factory supplied or in-built decoders)

D&H DH10C or DH05C for some Fleischmann, Arnold, HobbyTrain, and a PIKO

 

One Arnold needs some help (BR 185 "Porsche" model, where lights work but no movement in Analog or Digital, took apart and trying to find the broken wire)

[gavino200]

2 hours ago, chadbag said:

 

D&H DH14B in Minitrix (or set address etc on a few that had factory supplied or in-built decoders)

D&H DH10C or DH05C for some Fleischmann, Arnold, HobbyTrain, and a PIKO

 

 

Why the choice of decoder for different brands? Size constraint? Or are there other considerations?

[chadbag]

1 hour ago, gavino200 said:

 

Why the choice of decoder for different brands? Size constraint? Or are there other considerations?

 

The Minitrix socket is a 14 pin one called MTC14 or something like that.   So you need a compatible one.

 

The DH10C and DH05C are basically the same one but with a 1amp vs 500ma total allowed draw.  And the DH10C is a little larger.  I was using the 6pin version (for D&H that means with the ribbon cable attached) so what I used depended on if there were size constraints, and what I have on hand.  If I could fit a DH10C in I used that as long as I had them available so that I would not use up the DH05C for later use in size constrained applications.    I actually forgot but I used a PD05A with ribbon cable on one (very stupidly laid out) Arnold (the Porsche one) as the DH05C was slightly too long and stuck down and prevented the bottom piece from attaching all the way.  So for NEM651 (6 pin) applications, I used what I had and what fit, using the largest available that fit so as to not use up the smaller ones in case I needed them later in a space constrained train.

 

I have one DH05C with ribbon cable left (no others with ribbon cable) and 4 locomotives/trains on my table so I may be taking some of the wired DH05C/PD05A/DH10C decoders I have and unsoldering the wires and attaching the ribbon cable to get the last few, as I have plenty of decoders in my cache / stash but the rest are all wired.

 

 

 

[gavino200]

19 minutes ago, chadbag said:

 

The DH10C and DH05C are basically the same one but with a 1amp vs 500ma total allowed draw.  

 

Interesting. Does that make the loco go faster?

[chadbag]

13 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

 

Interesting. Does that make the loco go faster?

 

No..  It  just means the total draw of the motor, lights, etc. is limited.  All decoders have these limits.  If you have an inefficient motor, non-LED lights, etc. you can have a larger draw than a good motor with LEDs.