Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

601 004 traveling across the Danish country side. Fast-forward 50 years: 442 206 crosses a bridge that could be located in the Black Forest. Today I hung out with the ETE Bay Area Module Group at the Oakland Aviation Museum. I even brought some trains with me. This was a great opportunity to run the BR 601 in Intercity service in its full length consist with 8 cars, which looked great running on the long main line loop the group has set up.  I had a lot of fun running trains, chatting with friends, and enjoying the atmosphere. The museum was quite empty, which was a pity since there's lots to see besides model trains, especially if you're into planes. I took a short video, too.

 [ 601 posts ] I haven't worked on the BR 601 3-rail conversion project for almost 3 years now. I was stuck on a mechanical drive train problem, how to install lights, and how to power the sound decoder for the rear motor unit. In addition, the full train is too long for the Welztalbahn. So several intermediate cars stayed in the box, and a shortend train with the two power cars sat on a storage track in staging.  Now I  have an opportunity to run the train in its full-length glory on a larger layout in public, so I finished swapping all wheel sets for their respective AC counter parts and installed the hand rails at all doors. I'm not going to be able to finish installing the sound decoder in the second motor unit before Monday, nor lights or passengers. That will have to wait for another time. I hope that I can resolve the drive train problem today or tomorrow.

The red tail lights are micro LEDs mounted in the shell. There will also be a cab light, so I need a way to route power to all these LEDs and keep the arrangement pluggable. Here's my solution: a header soldered to the decoder "breakout board" and a perf board fragment with resistors to be kept with the shell. The "pins" are wire cut offs from resistor installs in other projects. Never throw anything away .... Here's a side-view with the cab light LED installed, and tail lights wired. The cab LED reaches too far into the cab, and is visible from the outside. I'll try to pull it back a little bit and also limit light leakage into the machine room. I might have to redo the breakout board, since I did a fairly poor soldering job on that, but for now let's see how this pans out. Here's a short video of 601 001 demonstrating the light effects. I still have not closed the chassis and engine roof yet.

[ BR 601 posts ] First test run of the whole train on the Welztalbahn. Chassis and roof of the engine car are mounted only temporarily, hence the gap if you look closely. Lights are not connected yet. The non-motorized engine car doesn't have its sound decoder yet. I'm hoping that that installation will be dramatically easier than with the lead unit.

[ BR 601 posts ] The ESU Loksound 4.0 decoder comes with a round 4 Ohm speaker. While the speaker is just small enough to fit into the machine room hood of the VT11.5, I have been struggling with mounting it in a way that the locomotive remains serviceable. Eventually I gave up and ordered a ESU 50321 "sugar cube" speaker. It fits much better, and sound quality is outstanding, especially considering its size. I spent some more time organizing and routing cables between power pickups and decoder. It's getting close for a test run.

[ BR 601 posts ] I left this conversion alone for a while after I learned that I needed a different truck assembly for the Maerklin version. The shipment has since arrived. Let's see if I can finish wiring this unit this weekend. Truck replaced. I might have to mill the frame a little bit to ensure that the cable from the pick-up shoe doesn't get squished between locomotive frame and truck assembly.

[ BR 601 posts ] I ordered replacement wheel sets for the Maerklin system from Roco, so that I can run the unit on the Welztalbahn. I also ordered a replacement gear box cover that is supposed to carry the maerklin-typical pickup shoe. However, it turns out that the replacement part I got has not even a remote resemblance with the part I need.  It's clearly not made to be a one-to-one replacement. So, ... either I'm doing this wrong, or the Roco warehouse made a mistake. Time to think about this some more. If I can't figure this out, I might end up moving the pickup shoe to the first passenger car and cable it to the motor unit. Update September 3rd: Wow. Yesterday I sent off a support request to Roco looking for an explanation. They not only responded within 24 hours, but gave a direct and technically complete answer. The gears of the AC version are different, so that the pickup shoe fits under the truck. The AC version has only 3 powered axles. Not only did they advise t...

[ BR 601 posts ] Slowly, but surely everything is finding its place. The PowerPack moved into the rear of the cab on top of the decoder. It turned out that the niche inside the loco nose didn't have enough space for the capacitor. I cut down the speaker baffle to fit the speaker between chassis and roof. I just need to decide how to keep it solidly in place, yet removable. I will use the red cross bar behind the cab to consolidate wiring for head and tail lights as well as mounting the cab light.

[ BR 601 posts ] I hate soldering an ESU PowerPack to the Loksound 4 decoder. Given the circumstances, this is pretty well done with reasonably sized solder pads, but I really don't like soldering on a $100+  decoder board. Once that was done and visually inspected, I connected speaker and a motor to the decoder and fired up the Mobile Station to double-check proper operation. Let capacitor charge for a couple minutes, fire up the speaker, disconnect the lead, aaaaaand ... urgh. Nothing. Yes, the motor is the one I replaced from Roco 43012 I verified the programming of CV 113, which controls how long the decoder pulls power from the capacitor. It was zero. Well, yeah, that's not going to work. Re-program to 150. Let charge. Try again, aaaaaand ... nothing. Urgh! No matter what I programmed into CV 113, it was zero when I read the value back out. Alright. Something is preventing the decoder from accepting the PowerPack. I double-checked my solder connections. All good. Scratche...

[ BR 601 posts ] Where I started: Two bulbs. The lower bulb illuminated the headlight, the upper bulb the tail lights. I took both out and installed LEDs instead. The photo below shows the arrangement for the headlights. A larger SMD LED in warm-white would have been cheaper and easier, but I didn't have one with the correct form factor and color temperature in my stash, so I used this pico LED instead and mounted it inside a styrene tube. At least it comes with the cables already attached. I'm still considering mounting it in the shell with the tail light LEDs. The tail lights are illuminated individually with one pico LED glued on the tail light optics each and covered with shrink tube to minimize red light seepage into the head lights.  I didn't dare shrinking the tube inside the plastic shell, so I just glued them in place with canopy glue. These LEDs are very bright. Once connected to the decoder, I will need to experiment with finding the right resistor value to get ...

[ BR 601 posts ] Oh yes! That's much more convincing. Now I just need to figure out an equally convincing way to mount the LEDs to the shell...

[ BR 601 posts ] The title page of Eisenbahn Journal March 2018 confirms, the VT11.5 has golden-white/yellowish headlights. This photo is also a great case study for weathering the unit when I'm done with the insides.

[ BR 601 posts ] The model comes with bulbs that barely illuminate the headlights, even at 12 volts. If I put a 2x3mm SMD LED in place of the bulb, I get nice illumination. Good. I think the color temperature of this LED is to white-blue'ish. A closer look at a prototype photo hopefully will help resolve that question. When placing the same LED into the location of the bulb for the tail lights, however, enough light seeps into the headlights to illuminate everything. Looking more closely at the previous photo, the effect is visible there as well, but not as bothersome. The reason for this behavior is that the plastic piece guiding the light from the bulb to the headlights easily picks up enough stray light. In addition, it's one piece for both head and tail lights, so it's hard to guarantee separate light paths. At the very least the top headlight in the nose must be completely dark. One option I explored a little bit tonight was to position a LED on the chassis floor so ...

[  BR601 posts  ] Before I replace the motor, I need to make sure that the mechanical part of BR601 works well. Since the starting voltage is quite high, I decided to give the gears a thorough cleaning. To do that I need to strip down the locomotive to the bare chassis. I loosely set the new motor from SB Modellbau into the motor cavity and ran it with DC. Starting voltage was 4-5V. Definitely too high, which means that the gears are not running smoothly. I pulled out all the gears from the lead truck and set them aside. Ah yes, here's the problem. The gear tower is all gunked up. Everything got a thorough cleaning with soapy water. Rinse and repeat for the trailing truck. After putting it all back together and applying light lubrication, starting voltage is around 2.5V. Progress.

[  BR601 posts  ] I have started work to digitize this Roco 43012 class 601. Before I take it apart to install a replacement motor and decoder, I'm verifying that the unit works on DC. It runs, but gets going only at about 6 volts, which seems high for a straight DC model. Thus, I should probably take a closer look at the gear towers and axle lubrication. Here's a short video of the front unit running. The noise you hear is vibration of my test rig. I need to work on that, too.

[ BR601 posts ] The VT11.5, after 1969 known as class 601, is a popular staple on many model railroads because it is the epitome of luxury German TEE service between major European cities along the Rhine valley. By the early seventies, TEE service transitioned to locomotive-hauled trains and the older diesel units were used in the new InterCity service, usually with a metal shield covering the TEE logo. Many modelers don't like that period of these famous units, because it reflects the decline of the class towards the end of its life. It also isn't quite as cool as the remotored units equipped with gas turbines as the prime mover which became class 602 for improved acceleration in InterCity service. Towards the end of the 1970's and into the 80's, the trains were used in charter service for a while. As a consequence there are lots of models of the VT11.5 accurate for its TEE heydays in the 1950's and 60's, several recent models of class 602 with prominent and ...