I'm actually pretty happy with how this guy came out last night. N Kato Metra F40 with operating head light, rear light, mars light, seperated out ditch lights, beacon and red marker lights... I've certainly put in lighting, but never this much before. I'm sort of digging it. Enjoy! Kelley. www.dufordmodelworks.com
Really nice work Kelley Are the resistors somewhere down in that area shown above? I'm assuming SMD's......what physical size and do you mind sharing some pictures of the boards you are making to use them? Thanks, Sumner
easy peasy...so, look at the pic where the unit is wired in...under the yellow (and black) shrink wrap are surface mount resistor banks. Its nothing more than scrap Kato light boards with a slot cut in them with resistors soldered in place. once the wires are soldered on, the heat shrink tubing gets well, shrunk over it to keep from shorting. On SMLED's, I'm using two types here...the ones off of Kato light boards (I have lots to harvest from). If you look at the rear SMLED, notice all it is is a section of a clipped light board with a yellow and blue wire soldered to it (then back to the decoder). The other type are 0402 warm white SMLEDs that I buy off of Ebay already wired up as I'm good at soldering, but not that good. If you look at the front red marker light you'll see the size of one glued in place. I hope this helps! Kelley. www.dufordmodelworks.com www.facebook.com/dufordmodelworks
Thanks for sharing…I’ve got quite a few of these and this has gotten me inspired! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks for the tips Kelley. That could come in handy. Probably shouldn't post this since I can't find a source for U.S./Canada decoder installers but... .... it is pretty easy to get in Europe. I saw these flexible PCB strips being used by someone on another board. He is in Denmark and as a big favor to me he ordered for me and sent them on to me. They have come in really handy. Above I cut a gap in the bottom strip under where the resistor is and put the resistor over the gap and the LED on the end. Then cut the strip to length and solder a feed to the blue wire on one side and the AUX that controls the LED on the other side. Made an AC to DC circuit to use in a turntable with a piece of the strip above. It is thinner than most wire so can work in places that it is hard to run wire past, like the side of a frame between the frame and shell. You could also use it as a solder pad, run the blue wire to it and solder any number of wires off of it. I later found it in the UK and at that time that site would ship to the U.S.. Got some from there but haven't found a U.S. shipper since. More info on it here and some links that might work for finding some..... https://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/Decoder-1/page-24.html Too bad one of the decoder sellers doesn't pick it up and sell it here (US/Canada). They wouldn't get rich selling it but it might bring in other business. Sumner
A few freight cars on the bench. The Rapido Center Beam was a recent acquisition that I was happy to find at the Plano TX train show a couple of weeks ago. I didn't notice at the time that it was in the package upside down of how it should have fit. I was actually surprised that could be done. It did explain why the lid was so tight and kind of sprung up as I opened it. Fortunately the only damage was that the etched metal platforms had been popped loose. I was a simple fix to glue them back in place and it was sitting here drying. The Scale Trains Coil Car was another find at the same show. Another really nice car from them. Nothing wrong with this one. It was on the bench having the dividers installed. Once they dried, I did set the coils in the car and replace the hoods. Those coils are metal and give the car a nice weight. The Cotton Belt box car was a find at a LHS in the DFW area and was priced low enough, I couldn't pass on it. It's still waiting on metal wheels and I'll probably paint the underframe a grimy grey black mix before it gets to make an appearance on the layout.
If you ask the Internet how to chemically strip Kato paint, the consensus is a resounding, "don't do it." I should listen to the Internet once in a while . New U30 shells are impossible to find, so I'm just gonna have to un-mangle the one I've mangled.
Is it perfect? No. Am I going to regret gluing the new marker and walkway lights in when I have to add the nose headlight? Probably. But at least I avoided complete disaster.
Just a quick side note from someone who's stripped...lots of them in the past. 91% isoprol rubbing alcohol in a tupperwear container. (70 won't work) Soak overnight. Put on a set of latex gloves and using an old toothbrush with bristles cut down or a rifle cleaning brush with nylon bristles (think like M16 cleaning kit) scrub away. Use round wooden toothpicks to get into cracks and crevices. It may take a couple of soakings and scrubbing to get most of the paint off. Once you are done scrubbing, immediately wash in warm soapy water. This prevents residue from the stripping process to dry on the surface. I usually follow this up using a badger abrasive gun loaded with baking soda to clean out any crevices and to lightly etch the surface for paint prep. This also works wonders for getting paint to adhere to handrails which are engineering plastic. Certainly ths step isn't necessary if you don't have the equipment, but if you're deep enough in to paint your own models, it's a tool you will use more than you'd think. Do not use stuff like Pine Sol, ELO, Brake Fluid, oven cleaner, Scalecoat wash away, etc. It ALL makes the plastic brittle or will melt it. This may have worked well enough 30 years ago on HO Athearn bluebox stuff, but at this point, I wouldn't even use any of those on that. I hope this helps! Kelley. www.dufordmodelworks.com www.facebook.com/dufordmodelworks
Kelley, Thanks for the tip of the day! I had no idea there was such a thing as an abrasive airbrush!!! Okay, so I'm a newby to airbrushes, but wow, mind blown! I had done some sandblasting on an industrial painting crew in a chemical plant (too many years ago to count), but just never connected airbrushes with sandblasting. So, I did a little product research, and found both top- and bottom-feeder abrasive airbrushes. I generally like top feeder airbrushes, but do you think they'd hold enough abrasive (baking soda) capacity for, say, cleaning up a stripped, N scale railcar body or loco shell? e.g. Paasche has a top feeder "air eraser." And using baking soda for a mild abrasive in the airbrush too! Of course, I've long used baking soda manually as a mild abrasive, but just never connected the dots.
So tonight was an interesting evolution. I put an ESU sound decoder into a BLI F-Unit locomotive. It’s not a straight forward installation either. I found out the resistors on the headlight board are of the 0 ohm variety, I never really understood the reason for that, but they were not enough to prevent the LEDs from popping. So I was able to move the LED for the MARS light to the headlight position and that worked fine, but the numberboard LEDs were not cooperating. I ended up robbing a 1.5k ohm resistor off the Paragon board to solve my light popping problem. It worked great. I have one more to do, I will get pics of it tomorrow.
Have a workbench / train table upgrade. I added two small desk grommets to my train table so that I can run wires from track on the inside to under the table. Previously I had made an improvised wire bridge out of some viaduct track if I had switches or an inner loop that I need to have wired up.
Ok so I promised pics of the work I have been doing… well. I didn’t get as many as I wanted but I got a couple. I discovered installing a Digitrax silent decoder in a BLI F-unit is actually more work than an ESU sound decoder in the same engine. It had to do with the ESU giving me access to the solder pads and Digitrax having them buried in the shrink wrap. Anyway here I am getting the engine ready for the decoder. The trucks are linked with a wire, the decoder will soon be soldered to one of the mounting tabs on the truck. And those blue and yellow wires are for the motor. I had to remove the motor from the frame to solder the decoder wires directly to the motor. Here we can see the light board, and the 2 0 ohm resistors. I didn’t even play around here, if you look closely you can see the ballast resistor just off the FL solder pad. And on the E8 I’m working on for the same customer I have found a fun solution to the lighting issues it has. On some models this board has 2 LEDs and this one has only 1. I used the LED pads for the resistor, which I robbed off the original decoder, and when I put the wires back on, I will simply relocate the + so it goes through the resistor first. And lastly I got the decoder installed in the BLI E8, I put it on the rails to test, I call up the number, turn on the headlight and all is good. Then I try and move it. It jitters backwards a little (no biggie just need to reverse the wires or tell the decoder normal direction is reverse) and nothing. So I decide to reverse the wires and make a better looking solder joint. While the motor was unsoldered from the decoder I tried putting a 9v battery to it. The motor didnt really run like it should on 9v and suddenly smoke started pouring out of the motor. Now I know what fried the original decoder. So now I need to find a motor for a BLI E8 Paragon 2 era. Sigh… Well that’s it for tonight. I did some other work, but I will write about that later.
Why blue and yellow wires to the motor? Digitrax typically uses orange and gray wires to the motor. The blue (positive common) and yellow are for lights.
2 more loads in process... Fresh scrap from the milling facility, needs a little weathering. Tried to model scrap wheel sets. Kinda sloppy, but from three feet out not bad.
Blue and Yellow actually, and those are not Digitrax colors, those are BLI colors. The Paragon 2 engine had brown and black only. So BLI does there own thing while everyone else seems to follow NMRA colors for DCC.
This post certainly is not as instructional and useful as all of the previous posts. BTW, thanks to all of the light wiring tips, very helpful. I will start a build thread when I really get into it. I have decided that my next NASCAR hauler will be, or as close as possible : I am "tinkering" with a different idea for the side : So, here is the "start" of the Crown Royal" unit : Keeping it under weight until the styrene skin completely dries on the sides of the trailer. I know, I'm nuts. Be well !
