Speed Matching

I've invested in a speedometer from Accutrack and I used it to do some speed matching.

My DCC equipped Mikados (two Model Power and one Kato) have all been speed matched and will run together flawlessly. When the last Kato, the one with the L1 conversion, gets its chip it, too, will be speed matched.

I also did some diesels. The two Life-Like Burlington SD's have now been matched, as has one of the Bachmann Pennsy SD9's that I got from Micro Mark for Christmas. This is a great locomotive with sound and everything, and I really wish they had Burlington paint schemes like the Life-Likes, but unfortunately they do not (and the LL shells will not fit on the B-mann chassis without modification, so that's out, too). Tragically I found out that the second of the Bachmann SD9's wouldn't run in reverse. I cleaned wheels and checked gauge and the front truck fell right out of the chassis. When I put it back in place I found that the gears wouldn't mesh and the wheels would spin freely.

So back to Bachmann it goes. Of course I don't have the receipt, so I'll end up paying full repair price on a brand new locomotive. That's my life. I'll suck up the cost to get it fixed, though, because I do like it, and I love the sound. The N Scale Encyclopedia didn't think so highly of them, but perhaps since I got a later run I got better locomotives (at least one of them anyway). Time will tell.

I didn't get around to speed matching the J's or the GP7's, so that will have to happen at a later date.

Video Break

I did some more running with the train club last weekend.

I got the two Mikes matched back up and ran them all day, this time they ran beautifully together and got a lot of attention. The PRR didn't ever have any USRA heavy Mikados like the Kato that leads in the video, but they had 38 USRA light Mikados (designated the L2) like the Model Power in the trailing position, and even kept five of them after the USRA relinquished control of the railroads. Look carefully and you will see that the MP light Mike is even painted Brunswick Green.

N&W 611 also did a couple of laps around the layout, but unfortunately 601 was sidelined with the same shorting problems it had experienced before. Parts are on order to repair it once more, it seems like that's all I've done with that loco since I've owned it. That is a real shame, too, because I really like having a J class that is not 611.

I also ran the PRR K4 with a full compliment of passenger cars and the Southern doodlebug made an outing with it's trailer. Fortunately I had no exploding couplers this time, although I did still have a number of 6 wheel passenger trucks that didn't want to keep all of their wheels. I have about a half dozen of them that only carry two of the three axles in one or both trucks. Fortunately they are all the outside axles, the middle ones are the ones that tend to drop out.

Any day you can play trains is a good one.

Weekend Report

Raleigh has a new train station.

Raleigh's Union Station has been serving passengers since it's grand opening in April 2018 but the retail spaces are not yet complete.With Christmas coming up the station wanted to draw in some crowds, so they asked my model railroad club to set up a layout in the second floor.

Of course we were happy do do so. We take any chance we can to play trains after all. The layout was set up the weekend before Thanksgiving and we have been running it on the weekends since then. This weekend I got a chance to join in the fun.

Saturday started with disaster as I packed up my trains to take to the show. I stacked up some train boxes and picked them up to put them in the wagon and the bottom of the bottom box fell out, and J class 601 hit the floor.

The only apparent damage was where the drawbar attaches to the locomotive, it's on a plastic peg and the peg broke off. I was able to re-attach it to what was left of the stub, so I packed it in its box and away we went. Unfortunately when I put it on the layout I immediately got shorts.

I put it back in the box and ran 611 instead. Sunday morning I took it apart and found one of the power wires had frayed at the solder point, and it was touching one of the other wires. I wrapped it with tape and this took care of the problem. With the short taken care of I ran it around the layout a few times and had problems with the front tender truck derailing.

I found the drawbar, being higher on the loco than it was previously due to it being attached to just the stub of it's previous mounting peg, was lifting the front of the tender up enough to unload the front truck, causing it to derail occasionally. I bent the drawbar until it no longer lifted the tender and then attached a train to it and had it steaming happily around for a couple of hours.

Next I tried to run some Mikados together. I had speed matched a Model Power Mikado with a Kato Mikado on my home layout with my NCE PowerCab, but when I tried to run it on the Digitrax powered club layout they were no longer matched. I was told that the differences between the two systems track voltages will cause this issue. I will have to try matching them up again, I will have to either speed the Kato up or slow the Model Power down.

I then tried running them separately and found that along with it's pickup woes the Kato is also a poor puller, even with the traction tires installed. Loosening the tender truck screws seemed to help the tender wheels maintain contact so the locomotive now runs reliably, even over rough trackwork and plastic frogs, but it wouldn't pull a very long train. The Model Power pulls more, mostly due to its all metal boiler which makes it heavier and therefore gives it more tractive effort. I'll have to see what I can do with the Model Power's headlight since it comes on only when it wants to.

I also have another Kato Mikado that has a GHQ Pennsylvania L1 conversion kit on it. With the white metal boiler it is a real puller, so I'll have to see about getting another kit for the poorly performing one. I have to do something with the drawbar since the tender is a Bachmann not a Kato, it attaches to the rear truck instead of to the frame where it should. I have some 3D printed Kato drawbars that are badly warped, but I may be able to combine one with the Bachmann drawbar and make something that works. It will need a decoder to be able to run with the rest of them.

I also ran the Erie Hudson around Sunday morning with the track cleaning car, but for some reason it was jumping the rails so I didn't put it on the track to run it during the day. The chuff start was also off, no doubt due once more to the difference between the NCE and Digitrax DCC systems, so I'll have to reprogram the start voltage for it. I'm really not extremely happy with the MRC decoder in this locomotive so I'll probably get a SoundTraxx for it like I have in the J class locos.

The Bachmann K4 got quite a bit of track time, first pulling the freight that the Mikados wouldn't pull on Saturday and then pulling a passenger train on Sunday. The three Bachmann GP7's also saw quite a bit of freight duty on Saturday with a long train of boxcars and hoppers.

Outside of some exploding Micro Trains couplers it was a pretty good weekend. I'm going to have to order some more couplers before the next session.

I have to work next weekend, but I'm hoping to get in some train time the weekend after...providing I get the work that She Who Must Be Obeyed dictates done around the house.

Kudos

I have mentioned the Woodland Scenics Just Plug system before in previous posts, and I have mentioned that I have bought three of the lighting hubs with broken knobs. I ordered some potentiometers through Mouser and when they got here I replaced the broken ones on one of the three hubs. The replacement pots work great, but unfortunately the knobs are a bit short.

On the other two hubs I elected to contact Woodland Scenics to see if I could get them repaired. They sent me a mailing label and I shipped them off. Today the two repaired hubs returned to me with brand new functioning knobs. The total cost of repair to myself, including shipping, was nothing. I probably should have just sent all three in instead of replacing the pots on the one myself. I'll be sending them all in now.

The  new hubs are now installed on the layout ready to be used to light up the last of the recycled DPM buildings. I have one new turret building to complete and two recycled ones and then the downtown buildings will be done and ready to have their gravel parking lots installed.

Anyway, kudos on Woodland Scenics for standing behind their products.

On a totally unrelated note, I have two Kato Mikado 3D printed drawbars on their way, hopefully this will cure the issues with the one I have.

Truckin'

I have to work tonight so I had to stay up all night last night. So to keep myself amused I played with my trains.

Yesterday a package arrived in the mail from Bachmann containing the replacement pieces to N&W J class 601's tender. I only got one truck although I had ordered two, so I ended up cleaning the solder off of the old trucks and reused them. I've sent an email to check on the last tender truck, but if it doesn't show it's no big deal now. Anyway, with the new tender frame and PCB board the locomotive runs like a champ and does not exhibit any of the shorting problems that were coming up on the old tender, and the sound is still just as good as it was before.

Something else that came in the order was a pair of K4 tender trucks, which is a different design than the Bettendorf type trucks on the rest of their tenders. I usually get the replacement tender trucks for their 2-8-0 when I want to put tender pickups on anything, and that's what I had on the Minitrix. However, with the correct trucks available it seemed a shame not to put them on. I had to trim the tender ladders a bit to clear the truck swing since they are a bit longer than the Bettendorfs, but they went on beautifully and look great. That loco also made a few test laps around the layout (the first time in a while that it has been out since being relegated to backup power for the Bachmann K4) and still runs good.

Now since I had an extra set of Bettendorfs with four wheel pick up, I decided to put them on that formerly great running now poorly running Model Power Pacific in the N&W livery. I drilled out the tender truck bolsters for the bigger screws and cut some holes for the pickups, then wired them in. I also cut out the problematic center wheel pickup on the locomotive that was regularly coming out of place and touching the track, shorting out at the switch frogs. I then carefully adjusted the driver quartering and ran it around the layout with a string of streamlined cars. I am happy to say that locomotive now runs as good as it used to. The only problem with it now is there is no headlight, a victim of the multiple disassemblies (it came out of place and got crushed). I think I have one from another junk Model Power, but I'm not really worried enough about it to risk taking the damned thing apart again.

Last but not least I put a decoder in the second of my Kato Mikados. The first one has a GHQ L1 kit on it with a Bachmann tender, I picked the chassis up during a sale that Kato was having and it never did have the correct tender. The second one I picked up on the auction site, it hasn't ever run as good as the first one. I later found out it has the typical first-run problems with the pickup on the loco itself, and the multimeter shows that the tender pickup isn't all that great either. It's a shame because when this locomotive is on straight tracks with no turnouts to deal with it runs just as beautifully as it is advertised to do, but as soon as the first turnout comes up it stalls unless it's at light speed. I'll probably end up having to hard-wire the tender trucks together to get the pickup to be reliable.

During the decoder installation I also managed to break the drawbar in half (for the second time), so I had to splice it back together again. This time I added some styrene on the sides and bottom in an attempt to strengthen it. During the repairs I managed to cut the tab off that connects to the trailing truck as well, so the connection to the loco is now strictly via the split ring to the trailing truck mounting post. It's difficult to remove so hopefully it will stay put; if not I'll have to figure out a way to either add another mounting post for the trailing truck or close the split to keep it in place. Since these items are made of unobtanium it will have to do, one way or another.

Everything has been put away from the train show as well, and all my prizes have been sorted and examined. I bought three wooden kits for structures as well as a couple of N and Z scale cars; no locomotives this time although there were a pair of Erie FA and FB units that was tempting. I also got some light posts that I was hoping to use on the police station but it looks like they are going to be oversized.

This is a work weekend so that's all I will be able to do with trains for a while. It's a heck of a way to have to make a living, but I've got to support my train habit somehow.

Showtime

The train show was a lot of fun. We had both T-TRAK and N-TRAK set up and running, but I only ran on the T-TRAK on Sunday. The Hudson got a workout pulling its train of green and cream cars and the painter got to see his handiwork in action. That is a good looking locomotive even if it never existed, it's one of those things that should have been but wasn't.

I also ran the J class locos, the 611 for some reason had its headlight on all the time and 601 kept shorting out. When I got them home I took the tender off of 611 and found the yellow decoder wire had a strand that was reaching over and touching the black, once it was trimmed away the headlight stayed off until it was commanded to come on. With 611 quickly fixed I moved on to 601, hoping to find something quick on it as well.

When I first acquired 601 the tender pickups were broken off so I just soldered the leads from the circuit board to the truck tabs. I thought maybe the wire from the tabs was touching the bottom of the circuit board. I took the tender shell off of 601 but really didn't see anything. I trimmed some of the solder joints, taped up the wires at the solder points, and moved the wires around a bit. Then I ran it without the tender shell (I did not know this, but the decoder has a blue light on it) and it ran fine. When the shell was put back on it still ran fine, so apparently whatever it was is fixed now. Hopefully it will stay fixed until the next show, but I think I will go ahead and order a new PC board for it.

I also ran some Nn3. Friday night I glued some Woodland Scenics ReadyGrass grass matting to a 2'x4' piece of extruded foam and when I got to the show I just set the MicroTrains track up on it with a few farm buildings scattered around. I ended up having to buy a new power connector track because mine had lost it's connectivity; fortunately there was one single vendor selling MicroTrains Z scale track. When the power connector track was replaced the trains ran most of the afternoon.

When I got home I worked a little on the K5A project. I had found a Rivarossi Heavy Pacific on the auction site, and I paid too much for it considering I was just going to take it apart and use the pieces. I figured I could just throw one of my spare light Pacific shells on the frame so it wouldn't go to waste. When I put it on the track I found the drivers did not all sit on the track, and when I put power to it there was a blue spark between the trailing truck and the frame. That's not good.

I pulled the shell from the frame and found extensive Zamecitis. It was so bad that the frame just fell apart when I got the shell off, basically the shell was the only thing holding it together. To add insult to injury when I started looking at it and the Kato frame I found it wasn't going to work very well anyway without extensive modification. So, I just put it on an Atlas frame that I had a light Pacific shell on, and I got my heavy Pacific anyway. Since all of the prototypes went to the Erie I'll probably end up decaling it for that road, but not for the loco I had planned to build because it has the wrong type of drivers. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I had previously bought a collection of Kato Mikado shells but I didn't think they were going to work. I took another look at them and realized they were going to be at least as good a candidate as the Rivarossi shell ever was, maybe better. So, I gathered the pieces together for a complete Mikado shell and glued them together.

Then I flipped it over and started cutting. I cut away the middle of the shell sides where they come together just in front of the smoke box, I widened the gap in the smoke box, and then I removed the back wall of the cab.

I then test fitted it to the Kato chassis, and much to my delight it went on pretty well. The Mikado weight even fits up into the boiler, so I will be able to use it as long as I put some insulation in between it and the chassis frame.

The firebox sheets will take some trimming and the cylinders will have to be reshaped, but it looks pretty good!

Unfortunately I'm going to lose the tender pickups. The K5A had a long haul six axle tender, which the Rivarossi came with, but it doesn't have all-wheel pickups.

If I do end up changing the Bachmann J class tender PC board I might just go ahead and order the entire frame, that way I can use the trucks off of the old tender for this project and keep the all-wheel pickups. I will have to do something else with the drawbar, but I was going to have to change out the trailing truck anyway.

The running boards and piping details will also have to be changed, but it's a good start. Maybe I'll be able to get this project done in time to show Grammy when we go up there for Thanksgiving.

Weekend Report

The Shapeways order has been put to good use and the bookshop is now open for business. I also put some lights in the police station and fire house. I have two of the reclaimed buildings to finish and one more corner turret building to do and then all of the DPM buildings will be complete. A little back-alley work will get those two blocks done and then it's on to the manufactory.

I also ordered a pair of Soundtraxx Tsunami 2 decoders for heavy steam along with some 15mm speakers. They fit perfectly into the Bachmann J class tenders and now I have a pair of them chuffing merrily through the countryside. Unfortunately my layout has curves that are too tight for them to pull any cars with their body mounted couplers, so they are chuffing on alone.

In a happy set of circumstances they also run exactly the same speed at all throttle settings, so if I ever want to go crazy and double-head them they will run perfectly together. I don't know if the Norfolk and Western ever did that, but refer to rule number one (it's my railroad and I'll do what I want).

The MRC sound decoder (which does not use BEMF, unlike the Soundtraxx) that was previously installed in J class 601 is now installed in the Erie Hudson and basically set up, it doesn't work any better than it did before but at least the Hudson now has a whistle and a bell. It does not have a body mounted coupler, so it happily pulls its set of streamlined cars around with no problems.

I also put another decoder into the semi-streamlined Pacific that was a good runner while in Lackawanna paint but doesn't run well at all since it has been disassembled for paint. It still does not run well. I have a plan to take all the wipers out of the engine and put some Bachmann all wheel pickup trucks in the tender, picking up power only from the tender trucks. Perhaps this will finally solve the running ills on that locomotive.

The Neuse River Valley Model RR Show is this weekend at the NC fairgrounds in Raleigh. The club I belong to has a layout there, so I took my newly-decodered locomotives there to run some laps. Unfortunately I couldn't get my phone to connect as a throttle, so no laps for me. I also brought my Nn3 but didn't get a chance to set it up today. Maybe I'll have better luck with it tomorrow.

Finally, I found a Rivarossi heavy pacific that I hope to be able to use the shell off of for my K5A project. I have all of the pieces, now I have to figure out how to put them together. I also got a casting kit, I'm going to try to see if I can make some castings and use them for my experiments rather than damage a good shell. Perhaps I can cast the Arnold shell as well and see which one works better.

And that's about all that is going on for now.