Hello. I do not attend this forum more than a Year. Now i m returning to my hobby again. There i suggest some helpful modifications, which I made, converting KATO N PA-1 to my own loco. Especially useful antidust crank cases on the truck and truck springs, which allow trucks to follow lateral track slopes. This loco have wheel and truck springing, extra weight, precise coreless motor, sound, powerpack, 3 metods of buffer lights working (train, shunting and single) and locouncouplers.
This is a antidust cover of crank case. Made by plotter from thin film and 3M scotch. Very helpful idea, saving gears from dust!
This is a video of wheels and truck springing . One can see that all wheels remains in contact with rail when loco are running via rail jump. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=537030683361166
That looks very impressive. Definitely a lot of improvements. Can you show a video of the uncoupling? Thank you for sharing.
Probably because it would make their equipment cost more and it would only address a problem that most of us have never experienced.
Or those that do run enough that dust being picked up is taken care of during routine cleaning and maintenance of their locomotives
Sorry, but I just don't understand how dust will collect in the trucks. I maintain a clean layout and dust generally doesn't float up into the trucks of my locomotives. I've been an N scaler for decades, and known and interacted with some "heavy runners," and I've never heard of people struggling with dust getting into their trucks. If this is a real issue, maybe you've identified an after market product opportunity.
Now i ll try to explain my problemm: I have 1 living room 16m2, so, i live together with layout. Therefore a lot of dust generates by movement of clothes bed sheets... et. al. Also, i have a main work, and railroad modelling is only a hobby. I have a little free time, on the contrary, it takes me a lot of time to clean 200m track of my layout. So, i clean my layout rarely, preferably using automatical trains in underground parts. I have rolling stock as with closed, as well as with opened gears. It takes me a little time to remove dust from trucks which captured only around the wheels on closed gear trucks. But, on the contrary, locos with open gears are picking up the sticking up dust from track by ends of teeth of gears, which are flying closely near sleepers and collects a lot of dust inside trucks, up to worms itself, and often it's a reason for jamming. It takes me a lot of time to disassemble such trucks and to clean it. So, I propose metod , explaining above how to avoid it!
I have locomotives on the tracks of my layout that lie dormant for weeks at a time and also locomotives that run very often and I never see dust on my gears at all. Perhaps it is because I run all metal wheels on all cars....
Good to see you back and modelling again, Vadim! I had been wondering where you went since I enjoyed all your videos of your trains that you posted here.
Thank, Taylor. As i see, there is a different people with different dust conditions, different type of wheels, etc. So, we have different situations with dirts in the trucks with opened gears.
Hello, David. I have few locos, and all of them work at layout each day without removement into cases. All my cars have metallic resistor wheels in aim to detect occupancy. All my loco are full drive and full e-pickup ones. I have route oriented control with automatic train leading and autoblocking. There is no plastic wheels at all. So, the problem, maybe, is in the character and type of dust. You can estimate my layout trackplan. This is underground ways:
Usually, dust is collecting near wheels. But in trucks with opened gears such knots of dust are forming inside trucks near gears, and around worms! It's dangereous!
My layout is very, very large. It resides in a building and has all sorts of activity going on with scenicing etc, and I still see no dust like you are. It may just be your location and the local environment. Mine is in Arizona up in the mountains. I hardly see dust at all there. This tells me it is location driven.
I use quality furnace filters and change them quarterly. Probably a good idea for model railroaders regardless of where they live.
