Sharing tips for Kato's malfunctioning Super View Odoriko 251 series

[drt7uk]

I love Kato, most of my rolling stock is Kato and I'd choose them over the other manufacturers everytime, and most of their stuff is engineered to perfection. But I have to say the Series 251 Super View Odoriko (Kato 10-1412) has a real design problem regarding the lighting. The pickups are poorly designed, meaning the connection is frequently dropped between the bogie and the pickup in the chasis, and the pickup that connects to the lights. The result is constant flickering.

 

I've now fixed them, and I'm sharing the below image in case it's helpful to someone with the same problem. It basically involves putting a bit of copper tape between the existing copper pickups so that there's never a gap. Word of warning - the front/rear carriages are an absolute nightmare to take apart and reassemble, particularly the front/rear lights, so be careful not to force anything.

 

You can get the copper tape on ebay for not much. 'Busch 1799 Copper Cable' https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114195761476. I bent it over a couple of times to a depth of about 1mm, which means that when the model is reassembled the pickups push against one another. I also bent the pickups that connect to the light up slightly more. I used electrical tape to keep the pickups in place at one end (to ensure the pickups on the bogies touch them) and to stop it shorting (via the central metal weight).

 

Of course no way to avoid needing to clean the wheels once in a while (unless you have a tip on that, would be great to hear it!) but at least fixed the loose connections.

 

Hope you find it useful. The same principle would probably work for a lot of other Kato models. Personally I can only afford to have it in two other models, my E5 series and my Santa Fe train. The E5 has some similar issues in a couple of carriages though not as bad, the Santa Fe works well as it is.

 

Cheers

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2020 by drt7uk