Heljan Western DCC Conversion and Kadee Fitting

1. Disassembly


There are no retaining screws for the main body moulding. But it is hard to grip anywhere - DO NOT grip the chassis by the fuel tanks as these are only held on by four skinny plastic clips and it is very easy to break them ( I speak from experience). The best disassmbly mechanism is to insert two thin sheets of soft bendable plastic one on each side below the drivers door and lift one end of the body up using these pieces of plastic as levers.










DCC fitting - the pin 1 diagram is not that obvious on the instruction sheets - here is a picture that should hope make it clearer. I used a LENZ silver, the silver direct would NOT fit under the body.










Kadees - I used number 19s directly on the NEM sockets. They seemed to work fine.

Bachmann Mark 1 Disassembly

As part of a longer term plan to add lighting to the coaching stock, I needed to dismantle a Bachmann Mk 1 coach.

As always this was more fiddly, and stressful than one would like. As models have got more detailed, they have also got more delicate. So here for my failing memory, as well as anyone else out there - here is my guide to dismantling Bachmann Mk 1s.

1. Remove Water Pipes

Remove the water pipes on each end they can just be pulled out with pliers or tweezers, if you just remove the lower fixing they can be gently bent clipped around the side of the coach.










2. Remove Bogies

Turn coach upside down and remove each bogies by unscrewing the centre screw.


3. Remove Coupling Assemblies

There are clever, but delicate little coupling assemblies below each bogie, these can be carefully unclipped.









4. Unscrew the base

Three screws can now be seen and removed. and the seating slid from the chassis.




When you come to reassmble, please note that the middle screw is not in the centre, so the base and the floor need to be lined up - if you put one in the wrong way round, the middle screw can not be done up.




Also note the bogies fit on with the 'gap' pointing towards the coupling socket.

Bachmann Standard 5MT disassembly / DCC fitting

Whilst I like this model enormously and it is equipped with a DCC socket - it is very tricky to carry out the fitting without damaging the plethora of delicate features on the model.


This is made unnecessarily worse by the lack of any good disassembly instructions....I hope this blog post will help others as some instructions turn a tricky prospect into a relatively simple one...it will also help me recall what to do when I have to it again.



To separate the body from the chassis requires three screws to be removed


Firstly the piece of the puzzle that I wish I had known was to remove the screw connecting the con rod to the rear driving wheel. This allows the connector from the con rod to the body - presumably this was the speedo connection on the protoype?...if you don't remove this then you end up like this....

The second screw to release is the countersunk screw at the front of the loco, indicated by the arrow in the picture below...










The last screw to remove is the hardest to find / get at , as it is hidden below what presumably are the brake actuating mechanism...but again my knowledge of the prototype is so limited that I am only guessing...In the picture below then I have labelled four components -


(1) brake rod running down the centre of the loco, is just clipped in place, can either remove completely or just unclip from the component marked '3' below and bent gently to one side

(2) can't be unclipped just have to bend out of the way.

(3) a 'nodding donkey' shape of component which is easily lost - clips each side and then has a locating lug holding it in place in the chassis.

(4) the screw we are trying to get at. Can't be seen on the next photo, look at the one below that.











OK now you can separate the two halves of the loco, let's turn to the DCC decoder, I have used a LENZ silver 8 pin with plug. The only thing to note is that to fit in the nicely designed slot for it to go in, you should trim any heatshrink back tight to the edge of the little circuit board as here:-





And here is a picture of the controller fitted into the loco - as you can see the controller is stood vertically in a slot designed for it mounted in the smokebox area.

When reassembling the loco there is a plate that fits under the cab that will have come out when you separated the body from chassis. Here it is below...

The plate fits back with the semicircular bit pointing to the front of the loco and the hole in that fitting over the lug highlighted in the next photo...

Heljan Falcon DCC

This was a relatively easy one to fit, no screws to remove the body, just used four thin plastic strips to slip between the body and the chassis and it came off fairly easily.

One of the nice LENZ Direct (8 pin) decoders fits directly in and pop the top back on.

Unfortunately the couplings are going to be harder as there is much internet fuss about the fact that the skirt below the buffer beam has been glued on and will foul *any* couplers that are fitted...I think I'll wait and see what happens...

Gash layout

As a result of building a very simple test layout - I have learnt a few things to jot down....

The test layout has curves of down to 31cm radius and up to 41 cm radius.

An awful lot of stuff wont go around the 31cm curves, and even stuff that does, tends to get buffer lock, with the kadee couplers.

Even the 41cm curves (measured only very roughly - I should do a better job measuring) seem to derail a fair amount of stuff. Which only just confirms the min. radius decisions for the plan (which is 65cm for any longer curves and 55cm at worst anywhere). This is still nowhere near realistic, but should at least reduce some of the most unrealistic look.

Also note Tim (a) wherever possible DO NOT MAKE JOINS ON CURVES it is very hard to keep them smooth and sweeping if you do. (b) for tighter stuff consider set track - esp if nonscenic.


Some people do not use track pins as they rightly say it ruins the look of the track I wonder how they manage to glue the track down if you do it on curves?

Must try the tillig elite track

Must try more point motor operation

Must do more kadee operation to check with my current fixing mechanisms with shunting and delayed uncoupling.

Heljan Falcon in Lime Green

Although there are some reported problems with buffer beam changes, Ifound that fitting a bog standard No. 19 Kadee worked with the standard (deep) buffer beam.

The model took an 8 pin Lenz silver direct DCC chip.

Standard Radius Curves and gradients

I am back to track planning as I now plan to hae a bigger room - whaay!

Reading various articles, people often talk about standard radius curves in terms of a reference for tightness, e.g. in terms of what couplings can cope with - I have not been clear on what these equate to - so for my own reference here they are -

1st radius - 37.1cm
2nd radius - 43.8cm
3rd radius - 50.5cm

I have also been investigating gradients - the general consensus is that 1 in 25 (4%) is steep 1 in 50 (2%) ideal, I am planning on around 3% so I think I may get away with that.

Wiring

Having watched the YouTube videos on Mckinley - I am sure I want block detection and computer control options.

This I think means digitrax or Lenz.

If I use Lenz then I could also use LDT for cheaper and neater occupancy detectors - see the RS-8

http://www.ldt-infocenter.com/english/home_frame_e.htm LDT block detection

Which is also used here

http://staffordcentral.co.uk/wip.aspx see 17th Jun 07 entry ....and here

http://www.electricnose.co.uk/dcc/dccsystem.html see also ...

http://www.electricnose.co.uk/archive/000458.html

in terms of computer control everyone seems to be opting for Friewald http://www.freiwald.com/

I notice that one of the bigger Dcc specialists is close to Mum and Dad - so perhaps I could combine a trip

http://www.digitrains.co.uk/index.html