Endo Type 923-3000 series Shinkansen Dr. Yellow in HO!!!

[Need for High Speed]

Yes, translating things from English to Japanese helps, Deepl is a good translator as well as google are both good sources. I did this a lot several years ago when I was trying to find what was out there. I also use translators a lot when researching China Railways. Here is an  unboxing video of Dr Yellow I found by searching in Japanese. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Kamome said:

think it all stems from some of the ridership memories of certain trains. Yes, she's a big girl, not the fastest, not the best looking. But she just has something I like.😄

It was the first train that got me interested in Japanese railway modelling and is still my favourite.

Also seen an E4 getting fitted with some new bogies on an open day near Sendai which was just impressive on a twin deck monster and have fond memories of riding E4s out of Tokyo and getting an awesome view of the train yard just outside Ueno filled with blue train locos and rolling stock. You won't get that view anymore due to multiple reasons.

I personally like the early E1 shinkansen and I like the E2 a lot as well because the E2 can easily be repainted and converted to a Chinese CRH2 EMU. The E4 Is ok, I'm not too crazy about it. If I had to choose between the shinkansen double deckers I'd likely go for the E1 instead in terms of esthetics. I've never ridden the Shinkansen myself but I have been on the Chinese high speed rail and its incredible hence why I keep mentioning it. 

 

Back when I first began collecting high speed trains in HO starting with a cheap Mehano Thalys PBKA I always said that in the world of Railways high speed trains are the sports cars, diesel freight trains are the trucks, and the commuter and most Amtrak trains are the everyday economy cars. In some ways this shows my perception of trains being in America especially when I was younger. But for many people in places outside the US, High speed trains are more integrated into everyday life and are less "sports car" like and less authentic to them. However, in the Model Train realm the sports car analogy feels more appropriate when describing high speed trains in part because they are sometimes very expensive and difficult to find. They can be fairly hard to find in many cases some more than others but if you are focused enough on them you'll be surprised what you can find second hand. Especially when you look beyond the confines of ebay and focus on foreign sites such as Leboncoin in France or Yahoo Auctions in Japan. both of which I can not buy from directly in America but their are proxy services or if you have a kind friend living over there who is willing to help you out the better. 

 

But many of the latest trains put into service in China like the new generations of the Fuxing Hoa CR400 family of trains have been especially pretty. Especially the CR400BF-Z/C is just stunning and has some faint echoes in its nose design of the 500 series same as the older CRH380A EMUs that barrow various design elements of the 500 series to. Many have accused China of stealing Designs from Japan in the past and in some cases they kind of did. But China has some very beautifully designed trains same as japan. European trains are ok the French TGV and some of Spain's AVE are cool where as the German ICE trains and some of the Italian trains just don't have the character many of the asian trains do.  Again we're talking pure esthetics here, Operation and reliability wise is whole nother story. 

Comparing CRH380A to JR West 500 series. The CRH380A is a single car static display model I bought because it's the high speed train I rode in China.

[Need for High Speed]

Dr Yellow DCC conversion process

 

It's been a few months been busy. But I would like to share How I converted the Endo Dr Yellow shinkansen to DCC a couple of months ago but forgot to make a post about it.  Many Japanese Manufacturers do not make their trains DCC friendly especially in HO scale. DCC is just not something that Manufactures in Japan seem care about. So if you are looking to convert your Endo Dr yellow shinkansen to DCC so you can run on more layouts here is how I attempted to convert mine.

 

DCC Installation was not particularly complicated.

Opening Dr Yellow is fairly strait forward their are 4 or 6 snaps that hold the body shell to the chassis using a thin wedge to pry it apart the shell slides right off.

 

Here is the coupler mechanism its fairly good as keeps the cars tightly together but swings outward to prevent binding on curves 

 

Once the shell is off the power car its fairly simple the power from the trucks is picked up in two copper strips the run between each truck. Similar to that of the Kato Hayabusa shinkansen. The Motor is mid frame and its wires are hooked strait into the copper strip the pair of metal prongs just to the left hand side of the motor are the things that feed power to the LED strip in the roof attached to the upper shell peice

The interior piece is held on with 6 screws. Remove each one to access the motor under the floor.

The Red and black feeder wires for the decoder are solder strait to the copper strip 

 

Next unsolder the Moto wires from the copper strip.

I left the wires to the LED prongs in place so they draw power directly from the track so the interior lights turn on as soon as the train placed on the rails. how ever unsolder the motor wires because that is what the decoder is going to be controlling. I feel turning on and off the interior in only 2 cars of a 7 car train pointless.

 

There is not really any room under the floor to hide a decoder. So, I drilled holes in the interior piece to feed the Power input wires and motor wires through.

I fed the wires through their holes then soldered them in place.

 

 

Once Complete screw the interior piece back on with its 6 screws.

Then tie down the wires and decoder so they don't flop around

Top and Bottom both power cars have different interior configurations so the placement of the holes and wires and decoders was slightly different for car 2 and 6

 

 

The Lights in the cab cars are weird. D1 and D2 are the power feeds to the PCB board that operates the lights I sodered the ble ground wire to the black wire that was attached to D1 and the white and yellow wires to the red wire attached to D2. This is did not work and I can't seem to find another way to do this.

 

The function decoder was small enough and their was enough room under the floor piece to hide the decoder in the cab cars.

How ever I might have to either buy a DCC friendly PCB board or fin a way to deconstruct the light board to wire the LEDs directly to the function decoder. I just run this without functioning headlights But at some point in the future I will see if I can figure out how to do this.

 

 

Over all Dr Yellow runs fairly decent under DCC sometimes the power cars which run at different speeds pull the train apart. Dr Yellow isn't as fast as I'd like it to be and its sensitive to voltage changes in the tracks. it can be a bit choppy when the tracks get too dirty and Dr Yellow needs a push to get going sometimes because one motor will start to move while the other one is stuck and the train stalls and needs a push. This is not the fault of the train its the DCC acting up SInce pre conversion Dr Yellow had non of these issues of the power cars fighting one another as much as they do under DCC. Although to be really honest the Tenshodo 500 series and Kato E5 run much faster and smoother than Endo's Dr Yellow under DCC.

But on the other hand Because Dr Yellow has DCC, it can now run on layouts at shows and my club layout for open houses.

 

Here is a video of Dr Yellow running on DCC at my train club.

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Need for High Speed

[Banana Joe]

I just got the second run of this wonderful train, but now that I got my first Japanese train, I am quite a bit disappointed with the running performance.
So I wanted to ask here (due to my lack of Japanese) if anybody has encountered similar issues:

Each motor car seems to draw a massive amount of 2.3A, which my DC transformer can't provide at 12V, which of cause makes the train terribly slow even individually.
Is that something normal with Japanese models, do I need another transformer?
My DCC station would provide 6A, but therefore I would have to convert it first (thankfully there is a nice guide here). Although I don't know of any HO decoder that provides 2A, usually they are kept at around 1A.

If it is a general problem, I guess I have to install my own brushless motors, because I can't stand high speed trains that are lower than my switchers.

Thank you

[Kamome]

On 10/23/2024 at 6:25 AM, Banana Joe said:

Is that something normal with Japanese models, do I need another transformer?

As there are 2 motors, interior lights, inspection lights, as well as Head/tail lights, you may need more power. 

 

I get steady cruise speeds for 1/80 locos pulling a 15 coach rake of lit sleeper coaches but on maximum power (14V, 2A) of the Kato Hyper D. Not going that quick, just suitable cruise for a sleeper train. One motor, but 15 cars drawing lowish power for each LED light. Couldn't say whether this is different to other countries models or not. There are definitely higher powered controllers on the Japanese market. Tenshodo TS-1 outputs up to 22V, 3A as an example.

[Wolf]

No H0 Expert but 12V sounds pretty low, isn't 18V like normal'ish on H0 layouts, some punching up to 22V even.

[Junech]

If I remember correctly, H0 goes between 12V and 28V. But it highly depends on what you do. We still drive one of our big club layouts with the really old FZ1 from Piko, produced in East Germany. It outputs 12V max. and trains can go pretty fast with that (even multiple at once).

 

Maybe you reduced the speed in the settings of your DCC decoder. Did it run that slowly before your DCC transformation too?

[Martijn Meerts]

2.3 Amps sounds like way too much for an H0 motor to be pulling, especially more modern motors. I wonder if there's some sort of issue that's causing this. If you look at for example an ESU Loksound 5, they output 1.5 Amps for the motor.

 

[Banana Joe]

Thanks you are right, 12V is quite low, but that was standing in the manual, so I followed it.
Additionally, I had a kind of short circuit in a connector of a brand-new track piece which caused the other 1.9A.
It now runs fine at 18V, although still not as fast as I would like it to be.
At 25V the speed becomes acceptable, but I am not sure if I want to run it continuously at that voltage, the LEDs have a 1.5 kΩ resistor with a 25V rated capacitor so should be fine. I am not so sure about the motor, and I didn't find a label on it to get the specs.
Now I can start the DCC installation, but as already said the Light PCBs are a nightmare. Let's see if I can find a solution.

[bnicolas1987]

I didn't order this model, but as I see on the picture posted by @Need for High Speed, maybe if you delete the two diodes D1 and D2 you can have the red and white lights separated? (This very hypothetical, I cannot grant this will work)

[avante]

I got the new run and can answer to the dcc for the head/tail lights. You have to treat it like a bidirectional/bicolor led. I'll post the diagram I used and how I wired when I get off work for those who want to know, but it's not to bad to wire up.