How did you improve your rolling stock?

[200系]

I hate to do this twice today, but... that isn't entirely true.

 

Though they were indeed officially classified as remodeled 101 series cars, in actuality only the bogies, traction motors and drive system were re-used from their respective 101 series donor cars, while everything else, including the carbody, was newly constructed and in turn was based on the design of the KuMoYuNi 143 type cars introduced, built by Kinki Sharyō in 1981. Now according to the data I could find they were (re)constructed at Hatabu Kōjō, currently the Shimonoseki general center, (KuMoYuNi 147-1 and 2), Nagoya Kōjō (KuMoYuNi 147-3), Suita Kōjō (KuMoYuNi 147-4) and Hiroshima Kōjō, though whether they built the new carbodies in house, or outsourced it to one of the larger manufacturers I'm not sure (I suspect the former though, considering the small number of cars and the way the work was divided). So yes you are technically correct and incorrect at exactly the same time.😅

[railsquid]

Excellent, my cunning plan to encourage Sander to provide more background detail worked :D.

[railsquid]

On 12/3/2022 at 9:18 PM, railsquid said:

Ueda Kotsu ex-Tokyu 7200 series:

 

Ueda Kotsu 7200 series by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Haven't been on this one, but I have gone past it. Annoyingly I can't find the correct bogie sideframes, theoretically they must be somewhere.

 

And in a stroke of luck I have located the little baggie with those and some other missing parts from various Tomytec models, so there's another couple of sets to complete...

[Kamome]

Part of my pedantic ritual with a new steamer is to add some coal scatter to the bunker. Just think it looks better than the plastic moulding. The mould is removed and then scatter applied to it whilst out of the locomotive. 

 

58654 from the Hitoyoshi set has just had its bunker updated to match my other steam locomotives. 

[roadstar_na6]

What coal do you use, @Kamome? 🙂

[Kamome]

Apologies @roadstar_na6 I can’t remember exactly, I think it might just be Kato/Woodland scenics coal.

It’s no longer in its package as I’ve put it into a sealable container so i’m not sure if it was this or another company’s product. 

 

I initially got some in 2 different sizes and mixed for use with HO but ended up using a ¥100 tea strainer to get some of the smaller particles separated for N scale. The particle size is a little large but not too bad thanks to the sifting. 

As the plastic moulded coal detail is removable, I take it out, apply a thin coat of water/ matt scenic glue and add the coal. I don’t buy trains with the intention of selling them on at a later date so like to add a little extra detail to the models. 

 

The big tender engines are quite easy, the tank engines slightly more fiddly. As you can see, this C59s coal bunker is quite large. 

[railsquid]

For reasons I can't quite recall, but alcohol and/or stress was involved, I took pity on an old Kato 100 Series Shinkansen set which qualified as genuine "junk" and was not finding any takers even at quite a low price, and among the many issues it turned up with was this bad case of diaphragm weevil damage:

 

 

(at least that's the best explanation I can come up with), and for additional "lolz" one of the plastic "pins" which hold the diaphragm unit in place had snapped off:

 

 

but that looks like exactly the kind of case where a collection of brass rods of varying diameter come in handy, so with a little drilling, rasping and gluing:

 

 

 

and insertion of the appropriate replacement ASSY part (Z04-2566 for anyone taking notes), and some finger gymanastics re-seating the seating unit, as good as new (for certain values of "new"):

 

 

Next up is the motor unit, which seems to be eager to present a whole other set of interesting challenges.

[railsquid]

13 hours ago, railsquid said:

Next up is the motor unit, which seems to be eager to present a whole other set of interesting challenges.

 

For a start, the bogie mechanisms came with copious amounts of fibrous material:

 

which leads me to think the unit spent a lot of time running on a scenic layout:

 

Not sure how this happened:

 

Or this:

 

though I do get an impression an Attempt Was Made to fix the motor unit as some of the tabs were broken off and one of the copper conducting strips had been replaced incorrectly. Spoiler: the motor itself is fine.

 

This was more problematic:

 

i.e. the supports which hold the bogie to the chassis were broken; the part is available as a spare from Kato (part number 29-955-2), but as I don't have any at hand it was a good opportunity to try out the "Bondic" device acquired a while back, which worked as advertised and produces quite solid if blobby joins:

 

 

 

which seem stable enough (though I suspect repeated removal/insertion of the bogie might reduce the lifespan of the joins) and the entire 6 car train now happily zips around the layout.

[lighthouse]

The KiHa get some new TN couplers. Totally forget about the couplers in storage 😅

[JR 500系]

6 hours ago, lighthouse said:

The KiHa get some new TN couplers. Totally forget about the couplers in storage 😅

 

That was the reason i contemplated for quite a while before getting on board the Tomix Kiha-261... hoping that Kato will do the Kiha-261 with better looking couplers, as well as the tilting mechanism that was already introduced in the Kiha-283... However, alas, the Lavender and Hamanasu is too good to be missed...

 

Something about the Tomix couplers bother me. MA has already came up with a way to reduce destruction of the original rapido couplers, but Tomix still requires one to cut them off, which really is quite a...

[disturbman]

12 hours ago, lighthouse said:

The KiHa get some new TN couplers. Totally forget about the couplers in storage

I don’t know if you care, but that’s the wrong type of couplers. The 261 use shibata type, not knuckles.

[lighthouse]

9 hours ago, disturbman said:

I don’t know if you care, but that’s the wrong type of couplers. The 261 use shibata type, not knuckles.

 

Hi, i don´t care about this fatal error. When I have a good chance to get the right type, i gonna buy them and change again. But now, it isn´t so important for me. Thanks for the information.

 

Best regards, Ulli

Edited December 31, 2022 by lighthouse

[roadstar_na6]

Got a Toki15000 for christmas and of course I couldn't leave it empty. So I went out, got me some cheap brass pipes (2.80€/m), some matches and a bit of yarn and made this:

 

[Kamome]

Decals and parts added and painted for the Aso 1962. It’s great how a few painted touches such as some red, yellow and white on the jumper cables and sockets, as well as some burnt umber on the coupler, black on the cables, really bring the details out. Also added a grey colour to the edge of the diaphragm on the Kiha 28 end. 

 

The colour is a little obscure as in photos it looks almost black. Kato’s version is more the colour taken from

Eiji Mitooka’s design. 

[shadowtiger25]

Weathered my D51 today.

Also added a real coal load and painted the cab because I'm insane

[shadowtiger25]

Adding the parts to my ED76 500 today and doing a pin wash.

While looking at photos of them I realized that the break lines and connector hoses are missing. And here I thought kato was detailed. Gona have to find some. Does green max make any?

[Kamome]

Looks nice @shadowtiger25

 

Yes no added hose details on these, only tap details in the mould.

 

Some of the photos I found also had them with yellow panto horns and step ladder painted in white so I added this to mine. I’d suggest enamel paint for the ladder as you can clean off the excess to get a sharp edge. 

 

 

[shadowtiger25]

13 hours ago, Kamome said:

Looks nice @shadowtiger25

 

Yes no added hose details on these, only tap details in the mould.

 

Some of the photos I found also had them with yellow panto horns and step ladder painted in white so I added this to mine. I’d suggest enamel paint for the ladder as you can clean off the excess to get a sharp edge. 

 

 

Oh I have so much more planed. You see i'm insane and spoiled on the detail of HO scale.

My plans are following the guides of this man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCSfPyA7Zvk&t=74s

[Kamome]

I see. Brass air hoses for n scale always seem difficult to locate. Not sure how I feel about ¥13,800 for 100 but brass wire is pretty cheap. 

 

This blog may also assist you. 

 

https://ameblo.jp/791p39m160/entry-12615308687.html

Edited February 28, 2023 by Kamome

[shadowtiger25]

Well I wasn't thinking of specificly going with brass parts. I saw green max has plastic ones

[JR East]

For white, I'm using THIS

for Colors, THAT

 

It's really convenient. To make sure light colors are visible, first paint in white then when dry with yellow or any other lighr color

 

[shadowtiger25]

I felt like adding coal to my sekis today as well as some tenders for my SLs

I think real crushed coal looks great although a pain to make

@roadstar_na6 you asked a while back what Kamome uses for his coal and I thought id ping you for mine. I took a hunk of coal I found by the trackside, I've wacked it down with a hammer, ground it up in an old.. uh.. herb grinder, and made a consistent size for HO with an old pepper grinder and separated out fine dust and peices for Nscale. I personally think it looks much better than any commercially available coal replacement simply because of the mix of mat, gloss, and bits of shiny to it. Nothing quite matches the real stuff like the real stuff. All you have to do is then use a little bit of 50/50 water glue mix, and mist it with 70% iso to get it all to bind. Little bits come off over time but I think it's worth it

[cteno4]

Oh man does that bring back memories! Like maybe 50 years ago I did that for all my coal cars as a kid. Made a huge mess, but like you said it’s really worth it! I did a lot of sifting to get a good mix.

 

thanks for the flashback!

 

jeff

[shadowtiger25]

Oh yeah it was a mess. Hands where messy and gota lot of dust to clean.

But I think the results speak for themselves. Luckily though I think it will be a while before I do it again. And next time it will be just one or two SL tenders rather than 30 seki inserts all at once

[roadstar_na6]

On 3/5/2023 at 7:05 AM, shadowtiger25 said:

@roadstar_na6 you asked a while back what Kamome uses for his coal and I thought id ping you for mine.

Thanks for that, looks really good.

 

Conincidentally in the past few days I've been messing around with coal to load my Chinese gondolas. In the end I went with a 3D-printed base and Woodland Scenics coal:

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by roadstar_na6