7mm Richards P48 US Thread

[richard carr]

It has been a busy afternoon and evening as the boss has been out.

I decided to convert the MTH GP38-2 in Illinois Central Gulf livery, so here it is all done and ready to go.






The orange isn't quite as bright as the photos

To convert it you need to remove the wheels and reprofile them and then fit them back on the original split axles.

I have also narrowered the bogie side frames, by unscrewing them and then simply gluing them back on pushed in by about 2mm each side. A fairly painless job, you just need to remove all the grease with some celly thinners.

I have also discovered how to change the sound files on an MTH loco. I need to get hold of a MTH Track Interface Unit (TIU), these appear to be a bit like rocking horse pooh at the moment, unless you want to pay 3 time the recommended retail price on Ebay.
So if anyone did happen to have one that I could borrow (or even buy for a reasonable price) please let me know. Otherwise I shall have to wait until MTH finally get some more mae.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

I spent some time today playing with the PS3 DCC. As a decoder it is fairly basic in terms of the motor control, there is no comparison to something like a Loksound V5 L. You basically have 2 choices the pre programmed MTH method or a PWM method. I did spend a while trying various set ups with the PWM method but I couldn't get it to work consistently, so after a bit of searching on the web for how the MTH method works, it turns out this does work well, all you can adjust are the acceleration and braking rate controlled by CVs 53 and 54 respectively, the default settings are 128 and 64, but these need reducing significantly, I ended up at 12 and 12.

here's the video of it in action

There are all the usual sound function and I do like F11, the grade crossing horn signal.

A real shame the basic sound is so wrong, I really do need tofind a TIU !

Richard

 

[richard carr]

Yesterday I moved back to the GP60 and narrowed the bogies





This is what it was like before







I was going to fit a new coupler box, but I should have known, the hole in the pilot is a different size from the GP35 so these don't fit, back to CAD for another version.

Back to cooking turkey now, time to take the foil off and crisp the bacon.

Merry Christmas everyone

Richard

 

[Jordan]

Yesterday I moved back to the GP60 and narrowed the bogies trucks.

That is a job I really need to do, even for '0W5' it will make a difference.

 

[Big Train James]

I was going to fit a new coupler box, but I should have known, the hole in the pilot is a different size from the GP35 so these don't fit, back to CAD for another version.

Depending on whether you want to split hairs, the later EMD coupler pockets designs are somewhat different in appearance than the earlier version on the gp35. As with all things in life, your mileage may vary.

Gp35



Later EMD locos, certainly dash-2 onward



Here's a late version with the coupler carrier intact

 

[oldravendale]

Depending on whether you want to split hairs, the later EMD coupler pockets designs are somewhat different in appearance than the earlier version on the gp35. As with all things in life, your mileage may vary.

Later EMD locos, certainly dash-2 onward
View attachment 176824

I've seen some poor soldering and clean up in my time but that's truly awful. The weathering's pretty good though...

Brian

 

[Scale7JB]

Yesterday I moved back to the GP60 and narrowed the bogies

View attachment 176810

View attachment 176811

This is what it was like before


View attachment 176812


View attachment 176813

I was going to fit a new coupler box, but I should have known, the hole in the pilot is a different size from the GP35 so these don't fit, back to CAD for another version.

Back to cooking turkey now, time to take the foil off and crisp the bacon.

Merry Christmas everyone

Richard

What a difference, that looks great!

JB.

 

[richard carr]

I haven't posted for a while as I have been on holiday with the Boss, I did think something was wrong though when she insisted on getting up at 6:30 in the morning so we could go to yoga ! she's definitely on a health kick at the moment, but the yoga has done my back some good.

We got back early on Saturday morning and since then I have been getting to grips with QSi decoders. There is one in the Atlas Gp60 and another in the Sunset GP9, both run okay but clearly need a few tweaks to get them running perfectly, both also sound pretty good, better than ESU or Zimo decoders. Unfortunately programming them with Decoder Pro didn't work very well, after a bit of research I found that you could buy a Quantum Programmer (the same as a Lok programmer or Sprogg) except that QSi isn't the most customer friendly business to deal with, in fact they wer a complete Pain in the ************. After about 3 months of trying they finally posted out the programmer and I also bought another of their O gauge decoders, the Titan DO, they are $209.95 each.

I did try to get everything installed just after Christmas, I'm sure I followed the driver installation instructions correctly but, I could not get the programmer driver installed. I gave it another go on Saturday and after a bit of research on the net, I managed to install it via command prompt, which by passed the "the administrator has blocked this programme please contact the administrator" !

It is installed now, so I have able to tweak the settings of both the GP60 and GP9, it offers the most extensive range of adjustments of any decoder manufacturer I have seen, it also uses an indexing system for some of the CVs which result in 65,000 plus combinations. I can see why Decoder Pro isn't really designed to work with this. It has an excellent automatic lighting control that operates when you turn on F0, so for example on the GP9, if it is at rest the cab lights come on, the head lights dim and the marker lights go out, begin to move and the rear marker light comes on, the cab light goes out after 12 seconds and the forward direction headlight becomes bright. You can tweak all of this including whichever the light you wish to or not, I haven't see n this from any other source. You can also program a grade crossing warning to a function key, you cna specify how long the horn sounds for each blast, the gap between each blast, on the GP60 it is on F11, so once the loco is moving press F11 and you get a long blast followed by another followed by a short followed a long, all with one press of the button, and the ditch lights flash.

As I said above, at the moment the only O gauge decoder they sell is a Titan DO, which is the same as that in the GP9, this is what it looks like






It just fits in the body, it is quite large, but it is good 10amps, it has 12 light functions, stereo speakers and double connectors for track and the motor.


Richard

 

[richard carr]

Last weekend I spent some time adding the front lights to my Overland GP35, there are 2 headlights and 2 classification lights in the nose, and then 2 further headlights at the top of the cab. There aren't any lenses either so I turned up the headlights from some 5mm perspex rod. The holes for the classification lights (or are they marker lights) as 1.5mm in diameter so for these I used some 1.5mm fibre optic cable. You can cut the cable with either a "hot" knife or I find track cutters work well too. The problem was how to light the fibre optic cable.
I came up with this, it is 3d printed and holds a 2mm LED in the back and a piece of fibre optic cable in the front and then you can glue it in place. The headlights I was able to fabricate an LED holder from 5mm plastic card square rod.





Below I have added the fibre optic cable you can just about make it out





It turned out to be better to glue 2 of these together and then glue that in the nose




Now with the LEDs in place



Finally I have wired the pairs together so that it reduces the number of wires to be fed through to the decoder to only 4



Now I just need to do a similar thing for the rear lights.

 

[simond]

I like the LED holder approach, the optic fibre is presumably plastic, rather than glass?

It looks like loads of space until you add the wires. I got some “ultra flexibel kabel” from a DCC vendor at a show some time back - I think it was branded ESU - , and subsequently ordered a mixed bag of colours in 10m lengths ont’net. It’s really very thin, maybe 0.8mm over the insulation, but just excellent for jobs like this.

 

[richard carr]

Hi Simon

Yes the fibre optic cable is a plastic of some kind, it melts if you use a hot knife, it files ok, I got it on Ebay a few years back.

Do you recall the DCC vendor I really could do with some very fine flexible wire for lighting. The LEDs used here are prewired with a resistor for 12 volt use, but the wire is quite thick and not as flexible as I would prefer, but they are cheap at about 50p each delivered off amazon.

I will be doing a few more different style LED holders as gluing those in place was harder than I expected, the resulting light works well.

Richard

 

[Dog Star]

Richard (@richard carr),

We bought a pack of decoder wires that is probably what Simon has described above, this was purchased from South West Digital.

A bigger problem than finding a source of the thin wire is to locate a source of suitable heat shrink - we bought from an ebay vendor who claimed that the material would shrink to 0.8mm internal diameter and that was not the case... the material would not shrink enough to bind on the wire or the soldered joint.

regards, Graham

 

[richard carr]

You might have seen me asking about the grey colour of US freight cars on the US model dabblings thread.
I went to Halfords this morning and bought some Polar Grey, some Dove Grey and Alpine White. ThePolar grey is too dark and the Alpine white is too light (but its grey not white) so I have gone for For Dove Grey.

This is what it started out as, a totally fake livery, at least for Trinity 5161 hoppers, I think the RG did paint freight cars in this colour but not in 1995.




And this is what it has become




It's not quite an exact match maybe a little too much beige, but good enough for me.





Richard

 

[Big Train James]

DRGW did have orange hoppers, but from a much earlier era. They had Pullman Standard 4750 cu. ft. cars in the orange scheme that this is based on, as seen here.

I think your grey is quite good for the NS cars. Their's is a very neutral grey, while some have a hint of tan, or a hint of blue, or are quite cold. I think your choice looks very close.

One thing you might consider is removing the brake rigging that runs along the bottom of the hopper on one side. It's an early production feature, not found on most prototype instances in my experience. Later production cars had the rod, linkages, and slack adjuster running through the center of the car, directly above the center sill. It's an easy piece to remove, mostly a pressure fit. Up to you of course. I'm almost certain that the NS cars do not have this detail.

 

[mickoo]

Dove Grey, that's the colour I was trying to remember the other night, my first real car (not a loan or hand down from parents) was an Escort Mk IV in Dove Grey and I knew the colour was close, just couldn't remember what it was, now I know

Looks a nice finish, straight from the can or decanted and air brushed?

 

[richard carr]

Thats straight from the can, I'm very pleased with it, 3 coats 2 the right way up and 1 upside down.

Richard

 

[SimonT]

You're never going to get it right unless you buy some gray paint for the job.
Hat, ... whoosh

 

[TheSnapper]

…….A bigger problem that finding a source of the thin wire is to locate a source of suitable heat shrink - we bought from an ebay vendor who claimed that the material would shrink to 0.8mm internal diameter and that was not the case... the material would not shrink enough to bind on the wire or the soldered joint….

Graham try Here

UK supplier, reasonable prices & great service.
(Usual disclaimers)

Tim

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

A bigger problem that finding a source of the thin wire is to locate a source of suitable heat shrink - we bought from an ebay vendor who claimed that the material would shrink to 0.8mm internal diameter and that was not the case... the material would not shrink enough to bind on the wire or the soldered joint.

When I look for heat shrink tubing I tend to search out electrical and electronic suppliers and look for the shrinkage ratio as well as the initial internal diameter.

My preferred heat shrink is clear tubing with a shrink ratio of at least 2:1. I'll try and dig out the company from where I acquired mine.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Do you recall the DCC vendor I really could do with some very fine flexible wire for lighting. The LEDs used here are prewired with a resistor for 12 volt use, but the wire is quite thick and not as flexible as I would prefer, but they are cheap at about 50p each delivered off amazon.

Ideally you would require 32 gauge or 0.2mm flexible wire. DCC concepts offer packs or single bundles but can work out expensive if you only require a fair amount of a certain colour. DCCconcepts Decoder Wire & Special Fine Wire