Loco Testing, 1...2...3...

 DB powers up:

In the past few days, I've repainted 5 tarpaulined four wheelers and a KP, added another layer of decals to the ZH, made up/recycled three new container wagons to 40-foot boxes, replaced a broken Peco chassis and half a dozen broken couplers, oh, and made those two extra AOs for the TranzAlpine. A few missing handrails and broken headstocks were re-attached or refabricated on some of the diesels.  There's nothing like the chance to run a few trains in a few days to motivate some action.

In fact it feels like I've been doing everything and anything that I can to avoid cranking up the Digitrax to see if anything actually works. 

Yesterday I started some testing. I didn't bother testing the DXCs, as they are pretty reliable. 

The DGs were up first, as old-cab 2376 was also such a great performer at the start of the year when I was planning Elmer Lane. I figured that new-cab (once 2330, now 2007), with the same Kato PA-1 chassis and clip-in Digitrax decoder would operate identically. Nope. Couldn't even detect the decoder. Disassembled and reassembled. It looks like I'd put the copper strips in upside down. These transmit track power between the bogies and decoder, so they were not making contact with the latter. Eventually I got it going, but 2007 wasn't working nearly as well as the original cab. Much slower, and a bit erratic.

At this stage, I needed to look up the Digitrax manuals online, as its been a dozen or more years since I have tried programming and couldn't remember how to get it into programming track mode (run/stop+F0 if anyone else needs to know, then Disp and Set).

With that figured out, I checked that I hadn't set the VelicityMax and VMid CVs on 2007's decoder. Nope.

It was time for another pull apart. I seems the driveshafts and worms aren't seating that well on the bogie gears. After comparing the two locos innards, 2007 was reassembled carefully and everything clicked into place.  Finally! Progress. The two ran beautifully. They had no problem pulling the 30+ wagon 4-wheeled coal train around the ballon loop, and then pushed it back. I then tried this pushing and pulling with the engines at the back end of the train (flipping the positions of the locos and van). All good, so it seems this curve behind the roundhouse should be OK. 

The Atlas SD-35 based locos were up next. I vaguely remember these being a bit reluctant, skitzy and slow, and 4559 and 4421 certainly didn't achieve many millimetres on our last outing. 

DBR 1213 was first. It unexpectedly ran really well!  DC 4421 was stubborn and erratic, but after some running in and wheel cleaning ...ah the smell of carbon brushes and oil takes me back to Hornby models of the late 1970s...  After five minutes, this was running nicely. Sweet.

Ideally DC 4559 should pair with DFT 7132 on the Tranz.  Again it was similarly hesitant, but with the same treatment was soon humming after a few minutes. 

So that means it should run nicely with 7132, but alas 7132 was only running about half as fast as 4559. After some prodding into the Digitrax, it seems I had set the VMax and VMid on this one to slow it down. I'm not sure why. For some reason I thought the SD 35s had the Altas slow motors, but that wasn't the reality here, so I moved those two CVs up on the DFT a few times until the two MU'd together nicely. 7132 is a Kato SD40-2 dating from about 2010, so runs well, but periodically has that annoying screech that some Katos have. I might try oiling the worm bearings. 

DA 230 was the last of the Atlas SD35s, and it ran quite well on its first go without needing much encouragement. 

Old DFs 6277 and 6064, both Kato SD40-2s with hardwired decoders, wouldn't do anything other than sit there humming, but I'm not sure whether they are worth digging further into further, but I might have a look tomorrow.

DJ 3067 is a tough one. It was decodered just before I stopped with NZ120 in about 2013, and I couldn't get much out of it at all. Periodic flickering of the lights but nothing more than a quarter of a second of action out of it.  This was the big disappointment of today's testing, because the loco top will have to be pulled apart to get into the chassis and decoder. Obviously there is a wire or contact that isn't doing its job.

DI 1843 has a frankenstein chassis. It runs quite smoothly, but is pretty slow. The way the body twists when the direction changes makes me wonder if there isn't something binding in there.

Blue DX 5448, on a Kato U30C with a hardwired decoder was a surprise, moving well on its first try. This used to sit on a Bachmann Spectrum Dash 8, so it has no rear headstock. Given its success in the Moving Department, this and some rear brake pipes, were added...

DC 4939 is sitting on the same Kato SD9 chassis that it had on Otaki to Cass, also with a hardwired decoder. These hard-wired jobs were DCC'd about 1997 for my wee Wellington layout. This ran perfectly too. Unexpected!

DXR 8007, made a screeching sound. It turns out this Atlas Dash-8 chassis, with its modified DXR fuel tank, has no decoder! As I use two digit addressing, there will be an obvious issue as '07' is now taken by DG 2007. Its a trivial task to add a decoder, but this really needs some bogie work as well. I might concentrate on the DJs instead.

So today I did. I had 3067 running 'moderately well' after a few minutes, so then started to decoder 3021. Seems like a long time since I pulled it apart. It is. 

After about 5 straight hours without a break I still didn't have it going. Initially the new (Digitrax Z decoder from 2002) couldn't be seen by the programming track. Pull apart, check. No luck. Try again. No luck. 

Decided that my chassis-to-decoder link, via the old mini headlight board, wasn't connecting. Drilled holes for screws and made up some brass tabs.

Still no luck. Touched the chassis to the programming track and could finally see the decoder. Aha the bogies are filthy, covered in black gunge inside. 

Pulled them apart, cleaned them thoroughly. Put them back together. Shorts. Pulled apart. Checked a few bits, put some Kapton tape around the motor leads.  Shorts. 

Pulled apart, put electrical tape around the whole motor. Shorts. So far the DJ has taken up 5 hours of my time with no success. Bloody hell. 

I put it aside (before I threw it across the room).

Instead, I decided to add a decoder to my 'third DJ chassis'. Borrowed one from DF 6064. Modified the chassis and applied the decoder in about 20 minutes. It works!

But it has a different style of motor runs about ten times faster than 3067. And I didn't succeed in slowing it down. I slowed down the DGs so they run about the same speed as 3067, but that DJ is pretty noisey and sometimes erratic. It probably needs a clean, but that would take a pull apart.

The DI runs about ten times slower than everything else. So much for the South Island fleet!

AO11 - Encore!

 DB adds:

Back when my TranzAlpine saga started, I had high hopes for a really long Tranz. The longest one I photographed was 12 cars and two vans. 

I stopped at 4 cars and my two vans. But I've always kept a few spare cars in reserve, retaining the best 4 of the solid resin 56 foot car blocks made way back when. 

This week I decided to give them a coat of blue.

After a count up of my spare Kinki bogies, I figured I could only do three additional cars, having just used a set of bogies under the FM van. Further availability of parts and time made me scale this down to two. In the picture below, there are some decals, reflecting mirror windows and dark window outer materials that have been sitting in the ziplock bags behind for a dozen or more years. Here the underpieces start to go on. And then the windows.

Within a short few days, these two new AOs had their unders done, bogies and windows installed, and decals applied. The final step was the addition of the hokey inter-carriage connections made from basswood. Finally, a decent length TranzAlpine for Greymouth!

Just need to sort out some detail for the back end carriage now. I should probably put a Microtrains coupler on that end too to allow it to be hauled both ways.

New Feet for Old Vans 2 - the FM

 DB 

As mentioned, my classic old FM van was also sitting on clunky 40 year old fat-tyred bogies, complete with stuck on bits of bolts that represented the springs. 

These and their mounting pads were prised off revealing the unseen work of 'art-meets-engineering-meets-illusion' that makes this crusty old model. 

You may see the underframe tanks made from resistors (back in the old days that's what pre-surface-mount resistors looked like), the liberal use of balsa (side sills and roof guts) and still a fair bit of that old dark grey brittle Plastruct styrene (which was the bees knees before the white stuff came along). 

Those obvious square holes were filled with new floor pieces levelled up to the bottom of the bolster sills. A hole was drilled, and Kato Kinki bogies installed with a washer and chunky screw each. This was a much easier job than the 30 foot van.

As with the shorter van, there is a knuckle coupler on one end and a Rapido on the other for operational flexibility.

While the van was in surgery, some glue mess and scratches on the roof was painted over and the end handrails given a touch up. 

This doesn't look that impressive in these pictures, but looks fine from the recently intituted five-metre viewing distance that will be mandated for observing veteran models out of respect for the aged. 

 
At least it rolls down the track nicely now, rather than being dragged.

AO 10 - TranzUnders

DB prattles on:

Back in 2010-13 I made four TranzAlpine AO big window cars (scroll down this ten years and you will find how they were made).

But I never got around to finishing off the underframes. I've pondered this for a long time. Being solid resin, the cars are heavy, derailments are inevitable, so their truss rods can't be too fragile.

Some time ago I purchased some square brass rod from Russell at Trackgang thinking that might be a piece in the puzzle. In the end the solution ended up being the usual blend of realism vs pragmatism.

To add strength, the vertical supports are solid across the car, being solid rectangles of styrene, with small notches in the corners for the truss rods, and larger ones for the existing underframe sills.

Then it was simply a case of folding the brass rod into the right shape, filing an angle in the ends and glueing it on straight.

The it was time for some underdetails. Of course who can remember what they are! Fortunately there is a nice picture on this blog showing what are probably water and toilet retention tanks on one side.

Some leftover slightly oversize wooden dowels from the dollar store were used for those. 

It took some digging around the hard drive to find some pictures of the other side. Most cars had what I assume is an air conditioning radiator and a few boxes on that side:

On the prototype trains, viewing car AG 90 was in the 'middle' of the train, and it looks like the cars 'west' of it all had the tanks on one side (north) and on the east end of the train, the cars were the other way around, with the radiator sides facing north. Here are some pics of both sides of the model:

My 'radiators' are radiator inserts from dash-8 shells cut down the middle and trimmed slightly (ex my DXCs).

And a splash of paint later: 

Not bad for an evening's work. A little weathering and touch ups to the windows and the blue might come next. Maybe more. 

New feet for old vans

DB says:

My FM van dates from the Otaki to Cass days, but still looks as decent as it did then.  The 30 foot van below is newer, so its a nicer model. 

Both have ugly feet.

Holy Rollers, Batman.

Despite these elephantine rims, the van can be dragged through pointwork, but rewheeling it has been on the agenda since it was built. The bogies have always looked quite appropriate, but unfortunately the wheelsets have an odd axle length that I've never found replacements for.

Never fear, for new shoes are now in hand from Dr Kato-san's Orthapedic Bogie Shop. 

Outer brake shoes removed and the top copper tabs and supporting plastic filed down:

The brake pipes/headstocks are a nice idea, but too 'far out' for use on this short van. They might look good under a 44 foot wooden car where the bogie mounts are a little further inboard. One of these Kato couplers will be retained, and a Peco/Rapido/Arnold one added to the other end.

Little angle irons were placed in the bogie sideframe corners (white unpainted styrene on the near one, and painted on the rear one):

When asked whether this was worth the effort, or whether these are likely to survive the first few seconds of operation, the writer was uncharacteristically evasive. 

Note the white plastruct tube in the background above. As these bogies have large mounting holes, this will be a pivot for the bogies to swivel on, and being a tube, will take a small screw easily.

Old mountings removed, holes drilled for the plastruct tube:

Mounted up:

The washer was needed because the screw head was a bit narrow. Adds a few micrograms of low-down weight too.

The Peco coupler, at the end where the white XC wagon is, has been moved further back under the body after this was taken. The Kato knuckle at the back end sticks out a bit far, but will couple to MicroTrains knuckles. Although its unlikely this will be attached to a set of modern coal hoppers.

The end of the UBC cement wagon is visible at right too. A little more white weathering helped hide those rings, but what really made the difference was a coat of  Tamiya Flat Clear. The Dullcote left a semi-shiny surface, whereas the Tamiya made it quite flat, so the ring doesn't catch the light nearly as much.

Work to re-bogie the FM will be similar, with replacement Kinki-eqsue bogies having been purchased a long time ago as part of my TranzAlpine experiment, way back when.

Weight for me! A heavier LC.

 DB applies lightweight thought to a weighty topic...

One of the the things we learned early on in the NZ120 story was that lightweight four wheel wagons don't always play well with a loco's body-mounted couplers. The loco end tends to throw out from the track centreline on tight curves, through crossovers and on other yard pointwork, and take the light four wheeler with it, whether there is any track there or not.

So before I start testing that old coal train around the big curve, I decided to add some preventative weight to the front LC which has a MicroTrains coupler at one end, for connecting the train to the locos. Ideally I want a low centre of gravity so the wagon won't topple over on curves.

A 20mm long section of steel rod was cut (the same stuff used for the CEs recently) with my knock-off Dremel. A matching slot was cut out of the Peco chassis to mount this low down, but not so low that it would be visible.

And a lead slug, which was recently found in the LA which became the yellow depot coal wagon, was squished in some big pliers. A hole was 'drilled' out of the coal load and the flattened slug was glued to the floor.

And then coal was reappplied. 

Nothing to see here, folks.

Re-built rebuilt DG

DB gets all nostalgic:

Recabbed DG 2330 was either the first (perhaps second?) successful NZ120 loco I built. Even though it has a lot of balsa wood, plastic and paper inside, it still stands up pretty well more than thirty years later. 

In about 1992-3 not long after it was built.

It has always had freestanding handrails, near-flush windows, see-through roof fan grille and a decent level of detail, including window wipers (in the early 90s!  - made from single strands of aluminium electrical wire), and '3d' brake hoses. The proportions aren't too bad given that it was built off a recabbed DG plan that Fettler von Amateur and I drew up with pencil and ruler in the mid 80s. 

The Microsoft Paint NZR logo on the cabside was printed out on a work laser printer (new tech back then) with the red flash painted in. It even had a crew, albeit HO scale giants, and the assistant's side window is partially open.

The hand painted numbers were not exactly a highlight, nor the chunky plastruct steps. The horns are probably a bit big. I'm not sure where they came from.

The chassis was an EMD E8 from Kato. The E8 is a long loco, so the Kato chassis had to be shortened. The rear end of the drive shaft was cut off with a hacksaw, and during exhibitions, the sharp end of it ground a circular hole in the DG's plastic back wall which is still there. 

In 2012, when 2376 was built.

By 2012, it has received a new DCC-able Kato PA-1 chassis, some finer steps, a headstock number (thanks MS-Excel!) and had lost its crew, who were still still glued to the old E8 chassis. Not much else changed. It still didn't have glass in the portholes nor much on the back - its never even had a rear headstock.

Fast forward to my thinkings of yesterday, where I thought I might give some of these old models a tidy up.

The numbers would have to go, and I still had some old leftover cabside ones from when I made my DXCs which looked like they may fit. While I was on the go, the paint was touched up in a few places. For example, you can see some superglue haze above the cab steps here, and a brown blob under the middle porthole, and no yellow on the edges of the front headstock, a white chip and some old contact glue residue on the cab roof -  all of these were later sorted out.

I decided to renumber 2330 into 2007 to match my 9mm one.

The handrails by the cab door and cab front corners were painted silver to represent the prototypical chrome ones.  Headlights in the form of MV Lenses were added. A bit of 'support' was added (a chunk of Evergreen H-iron in front of the fuel tank) to stop the engineroom steps getting bent in all the time. 

The crew were rescued from the E8 chassis and returned to DG duty! As this metal chassis is a little taller, they needed to have another slice of torso removed, so they are not much more than driving heads now.

The rear coupler was swapped from a Kadee (which kept lifting up) to the stock Kato plastic one, and this will mate up solidly to the matching one on DG 2376's backside. This ended up being a very time consuming process, as I ended up swapping the whole bogie out for one from another PA-1. And then tried to file a millimetre off the back of the chassis. Then reassemble the whole thing, whereapon I found one of the drive bearings was missing. Then I couldn't get the copper current collectors and DCC board to reassemble..... Then I kept dropping bits on the floor. Then I had to colour-match the bogies. Etc etc. So changing the coupler ended up taking one and a half hours or more.

Note the white hole in the styrene rear end (in the rear door)

The rear end got a partial headstock, a few brake hoses, a step, some MU plugs, and then I went mad and added some handrails. I didn't do the two on the back end of the roof as I didn't want to mess up its weathering. 

You might even see the recab has porthole glass now. Microscale Kristal Klear (not completely dry yet in the pics) was applied after black rubbers were painted in.

These widebody Kato PA-1s are big heavy chassis, so this pair of DGs should have no problem lugging a long four-wheeled coal train about. I still need to change that front headstock number though...