What did you run today? (HO and other scales)

[marknewton]

Running night at the club - the D51 "Slug" on a passenger consist. 
 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

[miyakoji]

Very nice detail above the cab Mark.  Would those tubes vent off steam or smoke?  Great formation as well with the mail car and green cars.

[Kamome]

I didn’t realise the Tohoku versions had such a long cab roof.  That’s the nice thing about the D51s. There were over 1000 manufactured but quite a lot of variation depending on the region. I do like the large oil tank on the tender and the slugs were the best looking in my opinion.

[ED75-775]

9 hours ago, miyakoji said:

Very nice detail above the cab Mark.  Would those tubes vent off steam or smoke?

At least one of those pipes is for the steam exhaust from the turbogenerators that power the locomotive's head, cab, and instrument lights. I had to pull my own N-gauge D51 200 out to confirm this, Hobbysearch wasn't very helpful this time around for photos to confirm this. I'm guessing that the reason for this was to keep the exhaust steam from the generator obscuring the crew members' vision while running.

 

12 minutes ago, Kamome said:

I didn’t realise the Tohoku versions had such a long cab roof.  That’s the nice thing about the D51s. There were over 1000 manufactured but quite a lot of variation depending on the region. I do like the large oil tank on the tender and the slugs were the best looking in my opinion.

Yep, they're something else, all right. With so many regional variations and production variations, it makes me wonder just how 'standard' standard was. I can well imagine that the extended cab roof provided some additional weather protection in northern Tohoku over the normal-length roof, but not as much as the nearly-enclosed Hokkaido version. Using photos on Hobbysearch (because I'm feeling too lazy to dig out any more of my stuff right now), the Kato 8620-class locomotives have the same extended cab roof too.

 

Oops, I'm getting carried away again. Sorry...

 

Alastair

[marknewton]

On 4/9/2022 at 12:40 PM, miyakoji said:

Very nice detail above the cab Mark.  Would those tubes vent off steam or smoke?  Great formation as well with the mail car and green cars.

They're extensions of the turbogenerator exhaust steam pipes. They're a common fitting on locos operating in the colder areas of Japan. I'd say the idea of them is to keep the exhaust steam away from the cab windows so it doesn't condense on them and obscure the crew's view forward.

 

 

The extensions often also include a muffler - steam exhausting straight to atmosphere from the generator is surprisingly high-pitched and noisy. The reason for the loco carrying two turbogenerators is that one supplies current for the loco's lighting, and the other is a dedicated power supply for the ATS system.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by marknewton

[Kamome]

Took the locos for some exercise at Stage 1 rental layout. Worked out there’s only 2 of the 4 tracks that I can use as either the 9600, DD54 or DF50 have some issues with either tight curves or relatively uneven track where details catch. 

[marknewton]

At the club on Friday night, ran the D51 on a plough special, and the C61 on a passenger train.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[marknewton]

Last night I ran the other "slug-form" D51 on the blue passenger car rake. It has an older QSI decoder, and is a little temperamental. It won't accept a four-digit or long address. I'll either reset it to the factory default, or replace the decoder with something more recent. But until then, it runs nicely and can haul a decent sized train.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.