What did you fix today?!

[railsquid]

Other half is fixed:

 

roco-v188-001_23266_07 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

roco-v188-001_23266_08 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

Unfortunately one of the internal gears in this rather colourful and adventurous gear train:

 

roco-v188-001_23266_06 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

binds occasionally with its neighbours for some reason, so I had to remove it, reducing the number of driven axles to 3.

 

Interesting mechanism, basically two motorized 4-axle locos (Do-Do wheel arrangement) joined together electrically *and* mechanically, with all axles driven and with pickups (via the rims), runs... very well.

[ED75-775]

So I am enjoying the first day of my week off from work... a new Märklin wagon arrives on my doorstep... and some bits had broken off in-transit despite the seller’s best packing efforts. Oh well, time for a trip into the (not quite socially-distanced) metropolis to get something to fix that:

 

 

Most of what you see here was already in my hobby arsenal, but I decided that rather than messing around with my Humbrol poly cement, to take @Kamome‘s recommendation from his Adventures in H0 thread and get some Tamiya Multipurpose Cement. I can’t say I regret it, the stuff’s fantastic. It fixed a broken hoop for the optional stakes, got the wagon deck glued down with a little help from some extra hands (a pair of Christmas present spring clips) and then went on to do the same with the schnapps distillery where a pipe had broken off. I couldn’t use the clips there, so I dug out some of my old varsity Blu-Tack which did the trick while the glue went off.

[Englehart]

i'm fixing my old kato Kiha 20 today

 

does this models originally comes in 5 pole motor?

[Welshbloke]

Not today, but in the last three weeks or so...

 

A Minitrix Br.111 sold as non running for £30. On arrival it appeared unused, the blackening on the tyres was unworn. Lights came on but motor wouldn't turn.

 

Removed the bogies (slide the pins out and catch the large gear directly below the worm drive). Found the factory oil/grease had set like concrete! A good squirt of WD40 Contact Cleaner (plastic safe, some other contact cleaners aren't so read the label) and gently rocking the wheels back and forth saw them spinning freely within a minute or so, followed by allowing them to dry and applying fresh oil. Reassembled and it runs perfectly.

 

Incidentally, if you have a Minitrix loco which runs backwards compared to the rest of your fleet then try swapping the bogies around. The pickups are handed unlike Kato or Tomix. The exploded diagram wasn't terribly helpful there, or on which way the body is supposed to fit onto the chassis. A decent prototype photo cleared that one up.

[Giugiaro]

Bought a few second-hand passenger coaches from someone who made the decision to switch to HO.

 

Two of them were 15 years old and needed a nice look into them.

I passed some cotton on the roofs to remove dirt and other debris.

Fixed the position of the coil spring of one of the couplers, that looked loose.

Popped all the axles out and checked the sockets for wear.

Cleaned all the wheels of their crud.

One of the axles dropped one of the wheels as soon as I took it off, so I had to fix it.

Once that was done, I lubricated the axle sockets and snapped the axles back in place.

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Giugiaro

[cteno4]

Love the n scale wheel set in a full sized loco shop! 
 

jeff

[Englehart]

On 1/8/2022 at 11:56 PM, railsquid said:

Other half is fixed:

 

roco-v188-001_23266_07 by Rail Squid, on Flickr

 

where can I buy this kind of tool?

[cteno4]

Gear pullers are made in various forms.

https://nwsl.com/products/the-puller-ii

https://www.micromark.com/search?keywords=gear puller

https://www.amazon.com/dp/

https://www.amazon.com/Walkera-Pinion-Puller-Remover-Tools/

https://www.towerhobbies.com/product/gear-puller-1mm-5mm-shaft/EFLA212.html

 

also these watch band pin removers work for smaller stuff and cheap

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175063007590?hash=item28c2918166:g:7ugAAOSwVwxhtxCu

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195126647103?hash=item2d6e74593f:g:8dUAAOSwww1iotfu

 

jeff

[railsquid]

9 hours ago, cteno4 said:

https://www.amazon.com/Walkera-Pinion-Puller-Remover-Tools/

 

 

That's the one I have, IIRC I purchased it via Ebay direct from China for less than the price quoted there.

[cteno4]

I had the nwsl one long time ago but it’s gone missing, I have a vague memory of lending it to someone. Need to make a checkout list, this happens all the time, but that seems way too formal.

 

i just ordered one of yours off ebay. I I’ve been making due with watch band one I had modified a bit to accept wheels for regauging.

 

jeff

[ED75-775]

Another wagon has had some surgery today: this time, a privately-owned ballast hopper used on the Royal Württemberg State Railways.

 

 

Gotta say how much I love that little SAG dump truck that came with it! This was a Märklin Museum exclusive for 2000. It was purchased from Germany but arrived with one hopper support broken in two and about to become three pieces. Oh no, time to get the tools out...

 

 

You can just see where I had to glue the lower 'break' in the hopper support, it's on the right-hand side main support. In order to get it right, I had to push the lower half out to apply the glue (Tamiya Multipurpose again, wonderful stuff!) then push everything back into line. The upper break was just below the 'lip' of the hopper and got a light coat of glue on the inside edge of the support where it won't be noticeable. Should hold everything together and keep it safe.

[Kamome]

Note to self,  “Microace plastic does not have the same tolerance as Kato.”

 

Changing the couplers on 18 Wokis and 2 Wokifus, I ended up accidentally splitting one coupler housing which decided to snap clean off. Some of the couplers twisted out of the housing without too much issue, but I’d say a good 40% needed cutting out to avoid damaging the bogie. I have some fine narrow ended nippers to cut the shank so the old rapidos fell out. I won’t ever use them again so no loss. 

 

As it needs to withstand a little torsion from coupling, I decided to use a “belt and braces” approach and glue, pin and add filler to ensure a bit of strength. 

 

I used 0.3mm brass rods to pin the necessary pieces back together and used some tamiya filler diluted a little with lacquer thinners. This allowed it to go on a lot more smoothly, although still required some filing down and sanding.

I used the short shank Kato couplers although all needed trimming as they don’t fit MA bogies. Trimming 40 tiny couplers was the least enjoyable part but the gaps are marginally reduced and no large rapidos spoiling the look of the hoppers. Looks ok so time will tell whether it will hold. 

i’m 

[disturbman]

😶

 

That never happened to me. And I changed quite a few couplers on MA sets.

Did you try GM knuckles? Not having to sand down couplers is one of the reasons I adopted GM's over Kato's. As far as I can see, the couplers you are using also do not allow for automatic coupling.

[Kamome]

Yes, possibly look at automatic coupling on the loco ends only. Haven’t found a suitable option for this type of coupler housing yet. I intend to leave the rake as a 20 car unit so intermediate cars will have these knuckles. 

 

I bought some of the 8056 GM knuckles but they also don’t fit easily, so went back to Kato ones. 

 

The GM knuckles look convincing so may see if I can use them on something else like my Kokis.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Kamome

[disturbman]

Yes. The GM short shanks can be hard to fit but in my experience they don't distort the housings once installed like Kato's often do. I never had to file them down and they usually have a bit of play once installed. But it can be that it wouldn't be the case for these Wokis.

[Kamome]

Irritating Kato shinkansen couplers lifting. Not sure i’ve permanently fixed the issue but OK for now.

 

Kato seem to have added a slightly bigger coupler design on my E2 in 200 colours. The clip is a lot heavier duty than my earlier E2 and E4, perhaps people complained about trains uncoupling. If these catch on anything on the chassis or body, or come slightly out of alignment they do a bit of wrestling with each other. 

 

Ran the thing on a rental layout for the first time and had lots of frustration. I was probably cursing the track work under my breath but now I know the couplers are to blame. 

Edited September 3, 2023 by Kamome

[disturbman]

How did you solve the issue?

[Kamome]

There actually seemed to be a few issues.  

 

The main problem was between motor car 5 and unpowered car 6. On closer inspection the bogie wasn’t turning fully due to the brass strips under car 6 not being seated correctly.

 

I took the whole thing apart and noticed this poor assembly had slightly warped the interior seating part. After some mild reshaping, I put the thing back together. No points for Kato QC on this one. 

 

The second issue was the diaphragm part itself. One piece had sprue flash that was snagging on the body causing the coupler to suddenly halt. Once removed, no issue. 

 

The final issue was the clip part of the diaphragm coupler. The 2 in the picture didn’t go together without a little extra force so i end up lightly filing the clip to add a tiny bit of play. This might lead to the coupler failing at some point so might look to get some spares for future issues. 

 

So all Quality Control problems as when I ran it from new, the combination of all 3 problems caused a lot of frustration. The rental layout track-work didn’t help but definitely the train.

Edited September 3, 2023 by Kamome

[Takahama Trainwatcher]

After connecting a section of my layout (which has many feeders) to one district of my Digitrax PM42 power manager, it continually tripped, indicating a short circuit. Through elimination, I eventually found a surprising culprit - a Kato 3-way power splitter (24-827). My digital multimeter gave a resistance reading of a few ohms between the 2 input cables. I opened it up and found that the 2 feeders to the left output (in the attached images) were touching each other or, at best, were less than half a millimetre apart (which could reduce when clipped to another cable).

The fix was a small piece of electrical tape between the 2 feeder wires. The casing needed to be taped together afterwards, but its looks aren't important. All is well now.

[cteno4]

Yikes just a strip of cardboard would have insulated those from each other! Bad design, while air is a good insulator, one small squeeze could ruin that insulation!

 

jeff

[ED75-775]

 

On again, off again wagon surgery - this Märklin 4771 stake wagon was a ‘moment of weakness’ purchase at Popondetta Osaka Denden Town, with all the stakes and tensioning levers broken off. I’ve since managed to glue most of the stakes and some tensioning levers on, and I’m in the process of doing the last stake now.

 

I’ll sell this one and get a new one at some point as I’m not happy with this one. It’s not been the most enjoyable process getting it to this point.

[Kamome]

On 10/14/2023 at 11:24 AM, Takahama Trainwatcher said:

After connecting a section of my layout (which has many feeders) to one district of my Digitrax PM42 power manager, it continually tripped, indicating a short circuit. Through elimination, I eventually found a surprising culprit - a Kato 3-way power splitter (24-827). My digital multimeter gave a resistance reading of a few ohms between the 2 input cables. I opened it up and found that the 2 feeders to the left output (in the attached images) were touching each other or, at best, were less than half a millimetre apart (which could reduce when clipped to another cable).

The fix was a small piece of electrical tape between the 2 feeder wires. The casing needed to be taped together afterwards, but its looks aren't important. All is well now.

These things are not a great design and the plastic casing can fail after a number of uses, whereby the sockets may become disconnected completely as well as a short risk. Seem Kato have moved away from this style for future releases. 

 

https://www.katomodels.com/product/n/accessories

[Welshbloke]

Not today, but most recently:

 

Fleischmann Br.110 described as "runs slowly". Pulled motor, removed brushes, cleaned carbon out of everything, a few drops of oil on various bearings and reassembled. Will see if the brushes can last a bit longer or if I have to dip into my small stash of replacements. Haven't had a chance to do more than a brief test to confirm that it works, will get some track out and let it run for a while after festivities. Amusingly it had the same polarity problem as the Minitrix Br.111, which can be cured in exactly the same way!

 

Atlas/Kato U25B in BN green and black (the original release before Atlas switched to their own made-in-China chassis). Nothing wrong, so just added a Micro Trains upgrade kit with infill panels for the open pilots and body mounted knuckle couplers.

[bc6]

I fixed my Rapido couplers on 6 cars with TOMIX couplers lol. 

https://n-scalerailroading.blogspot.com/2024/04/greenmax-jr-103-series-and-tomix.html

 

I also installed a light unit in the cab cars of my JR 103 Series.

https://n-scalerailroading.blogspot.com/2024/04/i-installed-light-units-in-gm-jr-103.html

Edited April 21 by bc6

[ED75-775]

A little Workshop Wednesday on my recently arrived stock:

 

 

From the front, we have:

Kato 2026-1 C59: Purchased from Hobbyland Pochi Kyoto, this loco had no bridge wires on the drawbar when I brought it. I’ve added new ones made from 0.3mm diameter brass wire, held down with a little Tamiya Multipurpose Cement as otherwise they won’t stay put on their own. If it doesn’t quite work out, I’ll have to wait for Kato to rerun the C59, or swap the drawbar with that from my other C59.

Micro Ace A2075 Chichibu Railway DeKi 301: Purchased from Hobbyland Pochi Shinjuku. I decided to swap the plug-in dummy knuckle coupler at one end of the locomotive with the optional Arnold coupler. Not a fun job, but now complete and the locomotive will be rehoused with its ‘sister’ DeKi 303 (A2082) in the A2077 wagon set book case.

Micro Ace A3061 Re 5000 Insulated Vans: Also purchased from Hobbyland Pochi Shinjuku, these vans had made funny noises while running in Hiroshima, and one had a coupling that was determined not to move. Having brought a ¥176 mini-screwdriver from Imon Shinjuku to fix this, I decided to do just that, and give the wheelsets a quick squirt of Märklin oil to (hopefully!) get them rolling smoothly.

 

I won’t lie, these MA coupler springs are the worst, because they’re not actually ‘springs’, they’re little pieces of plastic! Thankfully, I’ve got the couplers now sorted, and if push comes to shove, some Kato brass springs might meet the Side Cutters of Doom before they get dropped into said wagons as replacements.

 

And because OCD (and @cteno4!) say those slots must be filled:

 

 

Off-camera yesterday, I had a swipe at one of my Kawaii Shokai ToRa 35000 gondolas with some cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol. It made a slight difference, so I’ll have to find a stockist of something like Kato Uni-Clean oil to finish the restoration. Note to self 3.) avoid home-applied weathering if you can see it, and it’s not done tastefully.

 

Alastair