Z 24500 NPDC en livrée d'origine

 A while back, I purchased body shells of a Z24500 from Jouef, since the actual train set is almost impossible to find. I had the shells done to match the original livery. I then changed the body from a set I got with a livery I'm not interested in.

 

Prototypical EMU

Here are some pictures from the real thing:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hhhumber/5474243189/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/16412147@N08/8666123100/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/plzen242/49358365702/

 

Miniature Model 

Here's what I got made for me:

Here's the set I'm going to convert:

It's the reference Jouef HJ2122. It's the Métrolor livery for the Lorraine region. The body shell came with no pantograph, so I had to unscrew them from the Métrolor  body to the other one. It was very straight forward.

I added the two ESU decoders from Train Modelisme and some figurines as well. Here's the result:

 

Videos 

Interior lighting for Z 24500 - part 6 of 6

In the previous post, I successfully installed the ESU lighting strips in the intermediary car of my Z24500. Shortly after I removed the "old" LED strip from the two other cars thinking it would be now easy to upgrade with the ESU lighting strips.

I did the tear down and started looking into the ESU strips. As it turned out, there's very little head space in those cars because of the decoders and also in the upper section.

I left that project quite literally collect dust for many months, until today. As I was working on another Z24500 with the original livery, I came to the decision that I will not waste more time on that and gave up on adding the ESU strips.

As we stand today, that Z24500 has only the intermediary car with the ESU trip. I might, at some point, come back to it and reinstall the "old" LED strip. We'll see ....

 

Custom test bench - part 13: another switch for DCC-EX

 I realized a side effect of my recent upgrades on my test bench. When I use the ESU LokProgrammer on Track 1 or 2, the signal goes into the Arduino and starts the DCC-EX command station, and then it is a big mess! So the power switch to the Arduino was not enough.

For a while, I disconnected the track connectors from the Arduino, but it makes it cumbersome to put them back when I want to use JMRI since they are enclosed in a box.

I purchased a 4PDT switch to cut both wires from both tracks; probably an overkill ...

 Then, it's pretty easy wiring.

Before

Wires to the tracks

Wires to the Arduino

Reused an existing hole for the switch

The hole is a bit too big, but it works

MÁV V63 005

 I purchased this engine for my Avala and Drava formations. It came in DC and found a DCC Sound decoder from the Hungarian brand DigiTools that I ordered from Vasútmodell.

 

I found that the "extra" piece needed to be glued again by the buffer on the left side.

 

It wasn't easy to remove the body. I did follow the instructions; there are no screws or pieces to remove; it was just stuck and I had to force a little, but no damage was done!

 It took me a while, a long while, to figure out that the decoder was going underneath the main board. It was my mistake since it was actually written in the manual, but looking at the black plug from above, it seemed logical to put on the top rather than removing screws to put it underneath. Anyway ...

 

 

Everything works perfectly on this one (different from my PKP EU07). However, I cannot find out how to change the address from 3 to something else ...

 

PKP EU07-433 - part 1

I purchased this PKP model for several formations for the Ost West Express. It's a brand I didn't know about and from what I could read, they might have some issues during the manufacturing regarding lighting.

In any case, I got the model and only realized later on that the same store - modelcenter.pl - has the related decoder. But it was too late. Later on, as I was looking for a sound decoder for my MÁV Class V63, I found this vendor: digitools.hu. I bought two sound decoders, one for the PKP EU07 and one for the MÁV V63 from this store: vasutmodell.com.

 

 

As it turns out, the speaker is already installed. You can see the 2 black wires right above the decoder going underneath the main board. Under the black wires, it is written SP- and SP+.

I tried to change the DCC address with JMRI, but DigiTools does not have profiles in JMRI, even though it is a recognized manufacturer by the DCC standards - CV8 = 75. I tried to use a NMRA generic profile, but it didn't work.

I then tried to use the engine with the default address #3 and the engine did response to DCC commands. And the sound did work which confirmed that the speaker was indeed installed at the factory. That said, there must be a short somewhere because the DCC-EX would reboot and restart after a couple of seconds. Thankfully, everything is protected with DCC Concept modules.

More investigation required ...

BR 112 Roco - part 3

 As planned, I ordered a tiny sound decoder trying to make everything fit in there. I chose ESU 58820 LokSound 5 Micro DCC Decoder:

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of how all of this fits in the engine, but it did! And I loaded a ESU sound project. A video soon ...

 

I then moved on to adding the details. Back with my BB 16500 Vitrains, I struggled quite a bit to add details and found that my pliers of low quality were not doing the job. I upgraded with Japan-made tooling ...

A couple of days later, I finished installing the details:

This machine is now complete!

New engines

 Some recent acquisitions ...

Piko 96315 DCC Sound

ACME 60190 & ESU LokSound V5 DCC

MTB H0CD362-040 & ESU LokPilot V4 DCC

Piko 96341 & Piko 56569

Piko 51957 DCC Sound

Roco 63555 & ESU 58820 LokSound V5 DCC Micro 8 Pin