H0e forest railways with H0 branch line

[Martijn Meerts]

So, decided I'd spend a little time today on the Hokutan #2, to see if I could fix the squeak and the not so smooth running.

 

So, first step was to grind up some pencil core into powdered graphite to dry lubricate where the axles turn in the frame. As I expected, this was indeed the source of the squeak, and the powdered graphite fixed the issue. It also made the axles rotate better ever so slightly. The next step was to add some oil to the various bits of the drive rod system. For this I used some Marklin oil I had around, and used a needle to get it precisely where I wanted it. Last step was adding some ceramic grease to the various gears, making sure not to add too much 🙂

 

Once again added a decoder and power pack, and gave it a test run.

 

 

The video is a bit shaky, took it with my phone in 1 hand while using the ECoS with the other hand. Decoder still has all the default settings, so there's some weird behaviour just before the loco comes to a stop. For now though, I'm quite okay with how it runs, although I do need to figure out if the humming noise the power pack makes is normal. I do have a LokPilot 5 and one of the newer power packs, so I might try those as well, see if they have the same noise.

 

[Jaco3011]

Nice.

Is that Tillig TT track? What kind of couplers did you use?

[Martijn Meerts]

Yep, that's Tillig TT track, although I'm only using it for testing. For the layout I'll be hand laying track using the Fast Tracks tools.

 

The loco doesn't actually have couplers installed yet, but I do have some IMON couplers for it, if I remember right, they're IMON HO301.

[Martijn Meerts]

So, not much progress again. I've been doing a little more research into track used by JNR. Figured out they used 25 meter sections of track. IMON's track system is actually made for this, so their regular straight tracks are around 288mm. Based on their straight track I've made a template for hand laying the wooden ties / sleepers. I'll definitely need more of them considering there's 45 ties / sleepers per 288mm section.

 

For turnouts, they used straight ties, but my Fast Tracks fixture has canted ties. It's the only one they have available. I did check if they have a straight ties version, but that would need to be custom made, which can cost a lot. They also don't have time for custom stuff at the moment, so it's not an option either way. I've made a turnout template, again based on IMON's track system. IMON uses something in between a #6 and #7 turnout, so I had to adjust some things. I should be able to build straight ties turnouts using my canted ties fixture by building a turnout, but leaving out most of the soldered canted ties. I can then solder on straight ones based on my custom template, and then remove the canted ones again. A bit of extra work, but I don't expect I'll need a lot of turnouts anyway.

 

Another "issue" is that I have H0n3 ties, which are probably a bit too small. I think they might work for my general setting though, which is a branch line which historically hadn't had much use, but is getting more traffic and is in the process of being upgraded. So I'll probably get some regular H0 ties as well, so some new sections can use those ties, it should add lots of visual interest.

 

 

Also, as mentioned in the "what did you order H0" thread, my C55 57 kit came in. Not sure when I'm starting on it, but some initial pictures and findings:

 

All the bags of parts included with the kit. Some bags contain only a few parts, other bags contain like 30-35 parts. There's a whole lot of them. Also, don't mind the dust, the parrot's moulting again, so he's a bit dusty 😄

 

 

Parts in bag #1, mostly frame bits.

 

 

Comparing this kit to the 9600, it seems the 9600 is a somewhat newer kit. The 9600 has a cast frame rather than having you build the entire frame. The power pickup on the 9600 is also a lot more advanced, with wipers on the inside of all the wheels. I'm not sure how power pickup on the C55 is going to work just yet. Which brings me to the manual, the 9600 is basically a set of exploded view drawings with about 1.5 page of textual info. The C55 is mostly pictures of the loco being built, with the occasional exploded view for extra detail. From those pictures, the power pickup for example is very unclear, but I'm sure once I start building it things will start to make some sense. Or at last, I hope they will 😄

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I've done a little more research, and found a couple of blogs of people building the C55 kit. The earliest entry I found was from early 2012, so the C55 kit is definitely older than the 9600 kit. I was expecting it really considering the C55 kits were almost sold out, and the C57 kits sold out not that long ago. Both those kits probably were released around the same time and share a bunch of parts.

 

I've been going through the building instructions a bit, it's definitely going to be a challenge. There's quite a few parts that require some folding, but the instructions don't show how exactly. They just show a picture of, for example, the frame, with numbers pointing to various parts on the frame. The problem is of course, that while the bags are numbered, the parts themselves are not. The instructions are also somewhat blurry considering they're likely just printed on your regular home-office colour laser printer.

 

This is, however, where having built a bunch of World Kougei kits already helps out. I can pretty much figure out how things need to be folded or bent based on how the sheets are engraved. I also feel more confident about being able to build the C55 kit compared to the 9600 kit, considering the C55 is more or less just a bigger version of the World Kougei N-scale C55 I'm currently building, so I might just pick the C55 up first.

 

Also, a while ago I ordered some spiking pliers and micro spikes from Micro Mark. I currently have small spikes which are a bit big, so I wanted to try the micro ones. I also tried spiking with various tools I had around, but none of them worked really well. Since I might need to drive in a LOT of spikes, I figured a pair of pliers specifically made for the purpose would be a good investment. I ordered it many weeks ago, and only yesterday got a notification it arrived in the Netherlands. Now it'll just take customs forever to check it and than pass it on to the local post office where I can then pick it up (after paying import taxes of course)

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I got started on the C55 this weekend. Or actually, I got started on it earlier with some bits that didn't need soldering, but now I've also started the actual hard parts. The instruction manual leaves a lot to be desired, so there needs to be a lot of test fitting and trying to figure out what should go where, what bits to solder, what needs to be screwed on, and with which screws etc.

 

 

 

Started with something easy, the trailing wheels. This really just needed the cast brass parts to be cut out of their casting sprues, and then cleaned up a little. The holes on the front also needed a tiny amount of work to get the screws to fit. The wheels can actually hit the brass, so I'm wondering if I don't need to add some sort of spacer in between the frame and the wheels. I probably won't know until I can run the train.

 

 

 

These are the major parts for the frame. Lining them up is easy enough, keeping them in a 90 degree angle while soldering them was a bit challenging...

 

 

 

One side of the frame soldering in place, the other side only soldered at the front (the front is at the right side of the picture.) The parts on the left go over the trailing wheels and will support the cab. The little cylinder has a screw hole in it, so placement of that will be rather critical. 

 

 

 

The main structure of the frame. The rear section that goes over the trailing wheels can actually still rotate up and down for the moment, I need to first figure out how if this is supposed to be soldered in a specific angle or not. Also, there is a small brass plate with some tapped screw holes that needs to be soldered inside the rear section, but again, the angle of that isn't mentioned anywhere in the building instructions.

 

Next step will be to add the various leaf springs for the main drivers and the trailing wheels. Some of the supports / mounting brackets for those springs are etched in sheets of stainless steel, and need to be folded. Some of the to-be-folded bits are really small though (and of course, the instructions don't show how the should be folded ;))

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Managed to get a bit more done on the C55 57. Things are going together rather well, so for now motivation to work on it is pretty good. The 'instructions' remain a bit of a problem, but being a bit careful and test fitting things before soldering has worked so far.

 

I also noticed the little bag that contained the parts for the trailing wheels had 2 little brass washers in it. They are actually listed on in the instructions, but it never shows how to install them. Looks like a drop of glue and then pressing them into the cast brass frame half is the way to go. At least I don't have to go make my own washers 😉

 

 

 

Started working on the brakes. The top plate just holds the wheels in place, again nothing mentioned about it in the instructions. The brake lines are cast brass, as are the brake shoes. The frame plate has little holes in it to make positioning the parts quite straight forward, although the brake shoes will need some fine tuning. There's only 1 little hole per brake shoe, so you can actually rotate them.

 

 

 

 

Brake system (and wheels) in place temporarily.

 

 

 

Assembled all the parts I have so far, which are the main frame, the brake system and the trailing wheels. I also added the first of the brackets that hold the leaf springs in place above the trailing wheels. 

 

 

 

Started adding the leaf springs to the main frame. This is one of the more fiddly parts I've had to soldered on any kit so far. Adding these 3 springs took about 2 hours.

 

On the left there's a small nickel silver 'bracket', which is really small and light, so it's almost impossible to keep in position while soldering it. The spring in the middle is also nickel silver, and had to be folded into shape. This was rather challenging considering the metal sheet is extremely thin, and at times it felt just looking at the folds would make them snap. This one worked well though, but I need to fold 3 more of them...

 

The brass parts of the springs are also sheets that needed folding, but these were nice and thick, so no problem there. Obviously it still needs the spring above the 3rd driver, and then onto the springs for the trailing wheels. And then do everything again on the other side. The best thing is, the wheels will hide most of the springs 😄

 

Also interesting, just above the center of the nickel silver leaf spring, there's a hole in the brass frame. You'd think there's a reason for it to be there, but I can't find anything in the instructions. On the front, it'll be covered up be a small plate, and in the back (inside the frame) I'm not seeing anything that should go there either. It could be it's only used for other C55s of course.

 

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Yet more work done on the C55. Things are still going together quite well, and so far I've not noticed any major issues with forgotten parts and such. I also did find out what was supposed to go into the little holes mentioned in the previous post. There were some small bumper-like parts that needed to be inserted from the inside of the frame. I have no idea what function they have, but I guess I'll see once I progress further.

 

 

 

Finished the springs on the left side of the frame. The one on the far right was rather interesting, since this was a cast brass piece. It needed to be bent into the correct shape. The left side went quite well, but the right side (not shown in this picture) was really quite a tight fit.

 

 

 

Some parts for the leading bogie. The 2 sides were cast brass again, and the plate with the screw holes needed to be soldered on. This was quite challenging considering there were no markings to say exactly where the plate should go, and also no tabs or anything to hold it in place. It took about 2 hours to find a decent way of holding things in place, and then soldering everything together.

 

 

 

Quick test fit of all the parts including the leading bogie.

 

 

 

Parts for the gear frame. This was quite easy since the cast parts fit inside the bracket. Just a matter of keeping them in position and soldering them.

 

 

 

Parts for the cylinders. There are quite a few parts here, and it'll likely take a while to get everything in place. A couple of these will be critical to install correctly, otherwise it might cause issues with running once the loco is finished. 

 

 

 

Another quick test fit of the bits currently built. Once the cylinders are done, I think I can actually install the whole drive rods assembly, and even the motor. Of course that would be temporary, but very doable considering the drive rods are all screwed in place. The wheels on this kit have metal frame with screw holes for the rods, unlike the World Kougei kits that have plastic inner wheel detail and you press pins into little holes.

 

Also, the current test fit is already heavier than any N-scale loco I have, there's a pretty large weight inside the cylinders, and another one in the back over the trailing wheels. There's another 4 or 5 weights to be added, including a large one for the boiler.

[Martijn Meerts]

A little bit of progress. Worked more on the cylinders, which turned out to be quite challenging. There were quite a lot of parts, and aligning them all was a bit of a pain. Some parts were also really difficult to get in place.

 

 

The front of the cylinders. These parts went on reasonably well, but the longer rods are fairly soft parts, and bend quite easily. Definitely something to keep in mind when handling the loco. The covers on the side are so far only soldered on with a little bit of solder. These will need to be soldered on a bit better to close off any gaps. The cylinders also need a round of cleaning up some of the excess solder.

 

 

 

Rear of the cylinders (little bit blurry, focus on the phone camera isn't great, I really should use the DSLR instead ;)). There were 2 issues here. The crosshead guides (I think that's what they're called, the long dark metal bars) didn't want to hold solder too well. Also, with the heat of the soldering iron, it got a bit brittle, which cause the alignment pin on 1 of the guides to snap. Eventually I did manage to get them installed, but because of their length and the relatively small area they're soldered on, they will remain a bit of a problem. Definitely need to be careful with those while continuing to work on the loco.

 

Another issue was one of the valve crossheads (the cast part with 2 prongs just above the guides). During my test fit it went together well and sat good, but while soldering it ended up slightly crooked. It's hardly noticeable, and once painted it's likely not noticeable at all, so I'll probably not try to fix it. Unless of course it interferes with the running of the loco in the end.

 

Also, the weight inside the cylinders doesn't fit quite right, but that should be solved after another round of cleanup of the cylinders.

 

I still have a few leaf springs to install (and fix the positioning of the brakes), and then I should be able to do a test fit of the motor and the entire drive rods system. For the leaf springs I need to take everything apart again, so I'll likely also throw the parts in an ultrasonic cleaner, just to get any remaining flux residue cleaned off.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Not that much (visible) progress.

 

I've added the final few bits of leaf springs, as well as the small cover plates. That means there's just 2 little plates to solder on around the rear of the frame, which simulate rivets. I need to clean up a bit of solder to get those to fit, but they should go on well. I've also slightly filed down the notches that hold the wheels. They were very tight and meant the wheels had no vertical play at all.

 

The crosshead guide I mentioned in the previous post that had the alignment pin snap off is still a bit of an issue. I noticed the solder only grabbed on 1 side of the guide, so it's not very sturdy. I need to have another look at it. I've also started looking at the crosshead itself to see how smooth they move on the guides. The guides will definitely need some filing.

 

I have to say, the crosshead guide issue was a bit annoying, but on the whole things are still going together quite well. I've also noticed that IMON has several interesting loco's in their upcoming releases list. C62, D50, D60, C51, another run of C57, and at the end of the year there's plastic oha 35 coaches planned for release. It's getting hard to not move focus to the H0 side of things. If the C55 and later on the 9600 go together well and I'm happy with the results once painted and weathered, there's a good chance I may move to a large H0 layout, with a small N-scale one on the side.

 

[cteno4]

Slippery slope down the rabbit hole martijn…

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Very much so, but you can't really get away with a small layout in H0, because it looks like a lot of the rolling stock has a pretty wide minimum radius 🙂

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Quick picture, not great quality, the light was getting pretty terrible in the night 🙂

 

 

Started experimenting with the drive rods and their placement. There's a few challenges here, with the most obvious one being the extremely tiny screws and bolts. Once again, the manual isn't overly clear of how things go together, there's just a picture with part numbers on them. But at least there's also a closeup of the smallest parts and their part numbers.

 

All in all, it's not that difficult to get everything to fit, but I don't have a screw driver that's small enough for the screws. I'll probably just file down a small screwdriver I have to make it even smaller, and hope that works. If not I'll have to find some good quality watchmaker's screwdrivers.

 

One issue though, is that the eccentric crank looks like it's pressed on to the pin in the center wheel. If I assemble everything temporarily to see of the thing runs, that crank might not come off again. And leaving it on the pin while disassembling for paint will make it difficult to get it to line up again when re-assembling. I might leave it off for testing and just add a little stopper where the eccentric crank is supposed to go, so the main rod is at least held in place.

 

Other than that, the frame mostly just needs some more cleaning up, and then should essentially be ready for paint. Although, paint won't happen until after summer most likely.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Since the frame is nearing completion, I've started looking at the power pickups and motor installation. The motor and gear is pretty straight forward, the power pickup a little bit fiddly.

 

Strange enough though, is that there's power pickup from left and right on the locomotive (makes sense so far...) but the tender seems to only have pickup on 1 side. Or at least, it looks like there's only 1 power connection between locomotive and tender. I've not started building the tender yet, so I might be missing something, but it just seems a bit weird so far.

 

I've also started looking at the decoder installation. I think using a micro decoder, I should be able to fit the decoder, and possibly a power pack in the locomotive itself. However, while the kit only comes with 1 LED, which is for the headlight, this specific C55 has a light on the tender as well, and it has marker lights both in the front and rear. If I want to light all of those up (which in itself is going to be interesting), I might have to go with a H0 scale decoder, which would likely not fit in the locomotive itself anymore, or possibly go with a motor decoder and a separate function decoder. Either way, I'd have to add some wires between locomotive and tender. At that point, installing a decoder in the tender is also an option, in which case I could theoretically also go for a sound decoder with a fairly large speaker.

 

Now, I'm not fan of sound in the smaller scales, so I most likely won't go that route, but it's still somewhat tempting considering ESU has a couple of speakers that have a mid tones speaker and a bass speaker, so theoretically it should be pretty decent sound.

 

[Tom C]

@Martijn Meerts

 

I think you will find that the tender picks up on both sides. One side routed to the locomotive via the wire and the other through the drawbar. I might be wrong ? But this is the normal way it's done. 

 

Great build, keep up the good work.

 

Tom

[Martijn Meerts]

The thing is, the wire is soldered onto the drawbar 😄

 

[Tom C]

Oh wow, now that's got me stumpt ! Strange, very strange. 

 

How are the tender wheels insulated ? If they are of the split axel type there is hope, if they have an insulated wheel center then short of wheel wipers (that nobody likes) there's not much to be done 🤔

[gavino200]

8 hours ago, Martijn Meerts said:

The thing is, the wire is soldered onto the drawbar 😄

 

 

That's an interesting conundrum. What wire are you referring to, Martijn?

[Martijn Meerts]

4 hours ago, Tom C said:

Oh wow, now that's got me stumpt ! Strange, very strange. 

 

How are the tender wheels insulated ? If they are of the split axel type there is hope, if they have an insulated wheel center then short of wheel wipers (that nobody likes) there's not much to be done 🤔

 

There don't seem to be any wipers on the tender at all. The wheels are of course insulated, but the power goes from the wheels though the bogie itself, through the tender frame. Inside the tender you then have 2 little tabs you can solder a wire to, and the tabs get screwed onto the frame. It's a bit difficult to explain, I'll see if I can grab a picture of the manual later on.

 

Of course, the entire kit is brass, so it's not trivial to adjust it in order to have "normal" power pickup in the tender, but I'll first build the frame of it and see what I can do.

 

 

4 hours ago, gavino200 said:

 

That's an interesting conundrum. What wire are you referring to, Martijn?

 

There's a rather sturdy wire which acts sort of as a spring. 1 end you solder into a small hole in the drawbar, the other hand crosses the hole in the drawbar in the center. I've seen this system before in old steamers actually.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

Took some quick pictures of parts of the instructions.

 

 

This shows the construction of the drawbar, including the brass wire / rod (7-17) that gets soldered onto the main drawbar (7-8). Power is transferred from the drawbar, through 7-19 and 7-18 to both the motor and the connector. The connector is for the head light.

 

 

 

This is the frame of the tender. 23-4 is a plastic part to insulate the tender from the bogies. The whole tender is a bit of an interesting construction.

 

[gavino200]

Wow, that's interesting? Could it be that the tender picks up from one rail, while the engine picks up from the other? Or that the connector passes power and then gets reduced by a resistor for the light? 

[Martijn Meerts]

That's what I initially thought as well, but it looks like the loco does have wipers on both sides, and they're insulated from each other. There's also 2 wires from the wipers going to the motor.

 

Either way, it doesn't matter all that much. The loco has no traction tires, so it does pick up power on the 3 main drivers. Adding a decoder with power pack / capacitor should mean it'll run well enough. A power pack can store enough power for the loco to run for several seconds even without track power.

 

I'll just continue building for now (there's still plenty to do, there are literally hundreds of little detail parts) and see how things go.

[Martijn Meerts]

Quite a few updates this time. I've been working on the kit quite a bit, although only in short bursts. Partially because I don't have the time to work on it an entire day, and partially because after a couple of hours your head starts hurting trying to figure out how everything goes together 😄

 

 

 

All the parts for the tender's frame and bogies. Or at least most parts. There's 1 part not included here, which is shown on the instructions, but even on the instructions it has no part number assigned to it. Looking at the finished model on the IMON site does show the part though. I'll continue building for now and see if it maybe ended up in 1 of the other parts bags, otherwise I'll have to check with IMON if they can send the part.

 

 

 

Initial parts soldered on, the front and back plates as well as the side walls. These went together better than I expected, the large pieces of brass tend to cause problems with the small soldering iron I use.

 

 

 

Quick test fit of the tender and loco. The bogies are mounted wrong in this picture, so the tender sits quite a bit too high.

 

 

 

Even the coupler comes in parts 🙂

 

 

 

Partially built bogies and their various parts. There is a lot of vertical play in the axles, which is great for negotiating uneven track.

 

 

 

Underside of the tender with bogies installed. Quite a lot of detail in here which you'll never see during regular running. Maybe I should do an inspection pit with a camera built-in so you can see the underside of trains 😄

 

 

 

Temporarily added a Lokpilot 5 micro (or nano apparently, according to the ECoS). Notice especially the number of CVs, 1188 of them ...

 

 

 

Front detail. The little 'wings' (for lack of knowledge what they're actually called) on the front bogie are really close to the track. I can imagine this can easily cause a short, so I'll probably adjust them a bit so there's a little more vertical clearance.

 

 

 

Part of the drive rods installed and held in place in the middle with some blu-tack. Decoder very temporarily installed so I could do a test run. Backwards it worked reasonably well, but WAY too fast. Forwards I think the rubber tube driveshaft starts binding against the gearbox. I need to try and shorten the tube a bit and see if that improves things. I'm not a fan of the rubber drive shafts in general, but considering the wheels are sprung, and the gearbox is mounted directly on the axle, there's not really a better option.

 

 

I also figured out how the power pickup works. The loco has left and right power pickup from the main drivers. The leading and trailing bogies have power pickup on 1 side only, and connect to the loco frame. The tender has power pickup from 1 side only as well, the opposite side from the loco. That's routed through the coupler into to loco. The power pickup in the tender can easily be adjusted to pick up from both sides, so you can install 1 decoder (sound, function) in the tender, and 1 decoder in the loco itself. Not quite sure yet how I'm going to do the decoder installation just yet. A single decoder would mean adding more wires between loco and tender (unless I decide not to install any LEDs in any of the lights in the tender), 2 decoders obviously means more expensive.

 

 

 

[marknewton]

Just caught up with your progress on building the C55, Martijn. It's coming along very well I think. I also think you're a braver man than I am!

 

Those little "wings" on the leading bogie are known in English practice as "guard irons". They're intended to push small objects or obstructions clear of the rail.

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

 

 

[Martijn Meerts]

I wouldn't say braver, more like crazier 😉

 

Thanks for the info on the guard irons. I guess I shouldn't adjust them too much otherwise they'll look off, but right now they're almost touching the rail and once painted they'll probably touch the rail completely.