Routine Locomotive Maintenance

Running a model railroad is often just like the real thing. Many model railway enthusiasts will freely admit that getting the operations as close to reality as possible, with timetables, running orders, randomly occurring events, and so on, is all part of the attraction.

Just like real trains, model trains will eventually need some kind of maintenance, as will the tracks. Now, I'm not talking about major things here - such as switching to DCC, rerouting lines, or adding scenery - but about the little things.

Trains pick up dirt, often in places that are, at first, invisible. For example, a poster on the NewRailwayModellers forum pointed to an intermittent issue with a Bachmann Class08 not running smoothly, or indeed at all.

The suggestions (upheld) were that there was a build up of grime on the wiper pickups, which need to be cleaned routinely, by removing the wheels.

It's this kind of routine maintenance that can be made part of the operations by creating a works timetable to note when the last check was done of each loco, wagon and carriage, and what changes have been carried out. For those who already keep a logbook for each loco, this is just a natural extension of that.

For the rest of us, maybe it's about time we started to get real!

Aha! DCC Conversion for the Hornby Railroad 06 Class Diesel

Recently, those fine folks at Hornby released a Railroad edition of the Class 06 Diesel Shunter for an extremely affordable £20. Now, even a newbie like myself understands that there's a certain disdain reserved, by some people, for the Railroad editions, but when you're just starting out, with limited funds, Metcalfe models, and Railroad stock are just sensible, value for money, options.

Being a Railroad, of course, it's missing DCC, and the DCC plug, has no lights, and being Hornby isn't compatible with my existing Kadee couplers. So, I've got three projects on the go, one of which is now complete - my non-DCC Class 06 Diesel now has a Hornby 4 function DCC chip installed.

For those keeping score - that's £31 spent so far, plus about 45 minutes of work (bracketed by an hours worth of head-scratching.) Before I explain the project, I'd also like to point out that I wouldn't have even bothered, were it not for the free DCC guide that came with August's Model Rail magazine. I'd have just bought an expensive, DCC shunter, and not bothered with the Engine Shed, Goods Shed, track, points, etc. etc. that I was able to buy with the difference...

I should also mention that I have two regrets : I didn't take photos, and I don't have a soldering iron. So, this is a solder-free, no photo project. If you're going to attempt it, I recommend both taking photos, and using solder!

Step 1 : dismantle the loco following the instructions that came with it. If you're reading this in 2015, and bought it second hand at a local fair, then look underneath, there are little clips that can be persuaded to release the body from the frame in two parts.

Step 2 : cut the wires that lead from somewhere udner the motor (from the rail pickups), to the motor itself. Now, I know that there are people out there who will strip it right back, take off the motor, de-solder the TV supression (two capacitors) etc.etc., but I just cut the black wires, folded them back, stripped about 5mm of insulation off,and twisted the ends.

Step 3 : cut the plug off the DCC chip. You don't need it, since there's no DCC socket. But, leave as much wire as you can, as it makes the next bit easier.

Step 4 : put the loco down in front of you, with the front facing. This is important, because, unless you want to reverse the function of forwards and backwards, you have to get the right wire on the right side of the motor.

Step 5 : identify the right and left motor wires from the DCC pin allocations given in the DCC instructions. In my case, it was grey (left) and orange (right).

Step 6 : do the same for the power connections (rails). In my case, these were red (left rail) and black (right rail).

Step 7 : solder the correct colored wires to the correct black wire ends created by the cutting process in step 2. In my case, I twisted them together, and insulated with tape. Following Hornby's own directions, I also taped the wires around the DCC chip, but you might like to leave that until after testing and programming the DCC decoder. So...

Step 8 : test and program the decoder on your programming rail, or on the main.

Step 9 : if it didn't work as planned, check the wiring. If it did, put everything back how you found it, with the addition of the DCC decoder sitting on top of the motor - there's space!

And that's about all there is to it. No doubt I made mistakes, and no doubt others can do it better, but for a newbie, I thought I'd done okay! Next time, photos, I promise...

The next Railroad Class 06 Diesel project is to get rid of those irritating toy-like couplers and put on nice, shiny, but somehow out of place Kadees instead. After all, they did win the Model Rail magazine August edition's Coupling Test (for best auto couplers.)

Other railway modeling magazines are available.