Friday, March 29, 2013

DI 1843 Lives!

DB gives perennial fave Strictly Ballroom two thumbs up.

You may recall a long time ago that I finished off my DI. Not a bad wee model to look at if I might say so myself. Perhaps the best one I've ever made.

But that was some time ago but this loco had never really moved under its own electrons until 2 weeks ago when I took it to the Long Island branch of TrainPlayers Anonymous' layout with a bunch of other locos. Most of which didn't work either.  However after some prodding the DI lurched and wobbled down the track - if you see how the chassis was built, you'd be surprised that it could even lurch under its own power.

After some wheel cleaning and blowing the cobwebs off it, it turned out to be a really impressive performer. It's relatively slow but super reliable. The speed issue is probably due to a mismatch of gearing between the GP30 motor/worms and the Kato SD truck gearing so I'll probably have a fiddle with the decoder CVs to crank up the speed at lower settings in an attempt to speed match it with my DGs

I didn't have my phone with me then, but luckily I did this week, because, you know, "nowadays its all video, video, video" :


Golly its fun running trains around and around.

6 comments:

Amateur Fettler said...

Looks plenty fast to me!

Peter Bryant said...

Its hauling a decent load too.. well done!

Andrew Hamblyn said...

Mr Bond, that looks simply amazing! The whole combined image of seeing a NZ120 train actually running, and running through scenery is just invigorating!

Well done, and keep up the good work - its certainly inspiring.

AH

MaverickNZ said...

That loco looks great. The speed looks like it would be about an accurate scale speed. 50km/hr scales to about 110mm/s.

Amateur Fettler said...

So you'll be looking to start in Nz120 then Drew????

beaka said...

I managed to do the same thing with my Iddy 900 etched DA. I used a decoder fitted Atlas GP38-2 chassis and ordered some SD 35 bogies. Then had to shave the chassis to fit the longer bogies and gear area.Wondered why i had to adjust the CV settings for speed.The crazy thing is i had never seen your post until now. I joined the blog in 2009 and have never quite explored all of it, even now.the DI is certainly a lovely looking loco