Finished the conversion about 10am and went to bed. still need to fire up DCC++ programming track and set the address and configure motor outposts on cab cars to 255 across all speed steps to run lights correctly, but it works.
I have purchased 42 Kato locomotives over the years and have just now had my first issue, a bent axle on a C44-9. I wish everything else I ever bought had that kind of track record! After discovering what my problem was I ordered the part I needed from Kato's website and received an email back that same day saying the part had been shipped. Now that's good service! Hopefully I will receive my part this next week and finish my repair. Ralph
Mk, It came that way. It was the middle right hand wheel/axle, the locomotive had a wobble to it but otherwise ran fine. I finally got around to looking into why and after removing the rear truck and rolling it freely, I could clearly see the problem. I removed the truck cover and pulled the wheel/axle from the gear and then it was fairly easy to see it was bent. Now that I'm retired and with the Pandemic keeping me home outside of church, grocery store and very few side trips, I now have time to deal with all my PROBLEM CHILDREN. I have so far taken apart several Atlas locomotives to clean and relube them. I've also fixed a few issues with those, I'm just not really sure how I did it! Ralph
Ah, I see! Factory defect. Quicker and less headache to buy the part and fix it yourself than sending it back to Kato. Plus it may be so long that the warranty is over.
Yeah, the warranty expired long ago and I find Katos fairly easy to work on EXCEPT the screwless type frames. Still not enough courage to take one of those apart. Ralph
I got the depot done. Well I left the semaphores off the roof. It’s going to sit on my station modules in a way that when the center triple is out of the set, the little depot will still be there. When the triple is in the set it’s just the old depot that has not been torn down yet.
So I started on another building for the tram layout, it’s an apartment complex that will go behind one of the buildings in the middle of the layout. It’s another Outland Models kit.
Currently I have a bunch of locomotives that need DCC to be installed in them. Not the easy plug and play locos, but harder ones (like LL SW-9). In the past I had no problem taking these on...I'm great at soldering and electronics, but I've gotten to the point where I just don't want to do them. And once I do get them installed I need to program them - which being a computer tech I should be able to easily do as well but I just don't want to have to look up everything required to do it. Whatever happened to the original promise of DCC being cheap and easy to install?
When I was a body man I didn't want to fix the minor body damage my vehicles had, but they were mechanically perfect. When I was a mechanic I would not fix the brakes or CEL until I absolutely had to, but the paint shined all the time. Now I am an IT admin and I hate working on computers when I get home, unless I have to. Yup sounds about right!
are you using JMRI to program or doing it on throttle? I tried one time on a throttle this weekend... that’s it. I’ll never bother with it again. Not worth the headache when a DCC++ is so easy and cheap to build... even if only to use with a piece of flex as a programming track for JMRI.
What's that old saying? The Shoemaker's kids have the worst shoes! Back when DCC was introduced they said a decoder would be cheap and cost $10. Must be inflation that we're paying $30+ now.
I don’t think it reaches prototypical speeds, probably no more than 135-145 Scale mph. The prototype does 186.
Oh...I liked it. That train was made to go fast ! Even in n scale that train would look silly going just 80 mph...which is max track speed on class 4 track for passenger trains...in the U.S. ( with a few exceptions ). Of course with a BIGGER layout that train at speed would look really cool.
I want to at least run my TGV or ICE train on a layout that is large enough to make them look slow at full speed... I would prefer to actually own said layout, but I doubt that will ever be.
my latest addition to the 4-8-4 fleet, I now have 4 of these. This one is not the best of it's breed, on the upside it was cheap and was only bought for it's parts value. Oh yes it's missing one of its 4 and has a broken cab roof and firebox side.
Looks good to me too - you are certainly a quick modeller. Me Slow and probably too methodical, overthinking everything!
I may get a structure built fast-ish but in reality I keep tweaking them well after I have the walls assembled... One building can take me years to actually finish. Now in Lego, my wife used to buy me bigger and bigger sets to see what would take me the longest to build. The first set she bought me was Queen Anne's Revenge from the Pirates of the Caribbean series and I had it built later that night. I was just recovering from Pneumonia at that time too! The Technic Porche GT3R took me the longest to build of any Lego set I have ever built. My favorite set was the Saturn V rocket.
