Westfalen - There must be a lot of other revisions to the Shinkansen lines like the ballast you had mentioned. I imagine that the curves must be long to maintain that speed. I found the Shinkansen's to be extremely smooth when I took one and I felt like I wasn't even moving, did you find that it was the most comfortable train to travel on?
Back to the Micro-Ace 0-6-6-0. Ebit IMO has done the best job of converting one of these. The Man is amazing. See here: http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=37348 otherwise I had converted a couple "to my liking" of a logging 2-6-6-0. Here are a couple photos I have from a while back. This was about 80% done. Knda a bit rough rusty & muddy looking at the time, since these were taken I toned it down a bit and also used weathering chalks rather than paint. added more details, changed the front pilot from pizza cutter wheels and swapped the trucks on the tender. DCC, LED lighting, lettering numbers, etc. You can probably find more if you google or search on the various N scale train forums: micro-ace 0-6-6-0 microace 0-6-6-0 micro ace 0-6-6-0 ebit micro ace 2-6-6-2
There has been a few upgrades to the Shinkansen, but then it has been 45 years since the first was opened. I think the original minimum radius was 2.5 km, but the latest lines I think are 4 km, if my calculations are correct you'd need a layout over 164 feet wide to fit a circle of track in N scale. And that's the minimum, they probably only use it where the can't go wider.:tb-ooh: At the risk of raising the blood pressure of the French and Germans, I think they beat the TGV and ICE both in smoothness of ride and timekeeping.
Kozmo - Thanks for the information, I was wondering how modelers convert the Japanese prototypes to N. American since I don't believe MicroAce makes any N. American prototypes. How do you like the performance as compared to other manufactures? Westfalen - when I took the Shinkansen I couldn't believe the map with the time posted at the front of the car I was in. You can set your watch to their time table.
I have quite a collection of Micro-Ace JNR steamers as well as a few Kato JNR steamers and a lot of US Atlas, Athearn, Kato USA, Bachmann, etc. The Micro-Ace are right up there with Kato. Smooth, quiet, run excellent. the details on the Micro-Ace Steamers are excellent. FYI, the Atlas 2-6-0 was made by Micro-Ace. As for the conversion, take it as far as you need. A rivit counter may never be happy but for the most part, changing the tender, the pilot and a few details and adding American lettering and numbers makes a huge difference. Republic locomotive works make a lot of detail parts that you can use. there were other companies in the past that made detail parts, but either they went out of production or business. also some Kato mikado parts could be used. I googled (google images) things like 2-6-6-0, 2-6-6-2, logging locomotives, logging steam, logging mallets, etc to get an idea of what one should look like. as you could imagine there are a lot of photos out there if you dig around on the internet. and there are also a lot of variations in logging locomotives. different tenders, different looks, a lot of the logging mallets were tank engines, (2-6-6-2t) had the water tank over the boiler and coal on the locomotive and no tender. I'm not sure how easy it is to find most Micro-Ace steamers these days as I have not been watching. I got into them back in 2005-2006 when you could find them easy and for $50-$120 which is about what they originally sold for in Japan with the currency conversion. a lot of the 2-6-0 and 2-8-0 were $50-$65 and the 0-6-6-0 was the high end for about $110-$120. which were amazing prices for the quality and detail of these. after most of the regular retailers (mostly from Japan) sold out they started going for $140-$300+ on ebay.
I have some video from my first trip in 1990, of a Shinkansen departing Shin-Yokohama station where the conductor looks at his watch twelve times before finally giving the highball and doing a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown with his finger as he does. As you may know, on many trains in Japan, but not the Shinkansen unfortunately, you can go up to the front car and look over the drivers shoulder. You can usually see his timecard showing arrival and departure times and times passing other points where the train doesn't stop, on regular JR trains those times are at 15 second intervals, ie; station 'A' dep 10:15.15 sec, pass station 'B' at 10:21.45 sec, arr station 'C' at 10:26.30 sec. I've even been on one interurban railway near Niigata where the times were down to 5 second intervals. And they stick to it religiously except for things like earthquakes, typhoons or other disasters. I'll also have apologise to the Swiss now, because I'm going to stick my neck out and say that even the famous Swiss railway time keeping doesn't come close to the Japanese. Another interesting observation regarding watches is that all Japanse engineers carry pocket watches, and even the newest trains have a place on the dashboard to hang them.
Westfalen & Anybody - Do you find that installing a decoder in the Tomix trains for DCC operation is a little iffy? I've have 4 Tomix trains and none have them have been easy with a few blown decoders as a result. Anybody else have this problem with Tomix?
Now that you ask, I can't say I've ever converted any Tomix. I've just done my Micro-Ace Nankai Rapit though. Most of my Japanese trains, as opposed to locomotives are still DCC but I've decided to get around to converting them so I can run them more often at shows, where we usually go all DCC these days.
I spoke too soon, my Furano Express made by Tomix wasn't easy to convert to DCC but I eventually got it. Yesterday as I was running it, there was an awful squeal, it uses a long spring on each side of the motor that acts as a gear to drive the gears in the truck. Well it finally happened, it stripped the gears. In all honesty it was by far my loudest train on my roster. Here is a photo:
Time to start looking for a replacement. Lucky this isn't a Micro Ace train!!!!! http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/list/590/0/1
Thanks Bill for the link. This train, I have to believe, is one of Tomix's earlier models. The worm is a spring that was modified to set into the grooves of the gear in the truck. I have never seen a worm like this one and it's very noisy.
Bernard & Westfalen - I have done a few Japanese MU dcc conversions with no blown decoders yet. Some of them are a bit of a challenge, especially when I started trying to keep the wires hidden in my later conversions. I am about to start on the Tomix "100 series Last Run limited edition", will take photos along the way to give you some ideas of my approach. This chassis style involves milling to best keep everything hidden as much as possible, and it all has to be done twice on this one as there are 2 motor cars :tb-sad: Most of my dcc conversions have been on the shikansens from Kato, Tomix and Micro-Ace. Not all the end cars have been done yet, but I'm slowly working through them all. I have also done the Nankai Rap:t, Super View Odoriko, 885 Kamome and Sunrise Express. If anybody would like any photos, let me know and I will strip them down. Just be warned that some of my early efforts are not well hidden and I would like to re-visit some of them
MrPig - I would be curious to see your conversion of the Tomix 100 series. I have done a lot of DCC conversions on Kato Japanese train with a lot of success. It's the earilier Tomix trains that I having a problem. I might post the Nayoga train in DCC or in this thread, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of members here that collect Japanese prototypes and it is a differrent type of conversion since you need 3 decoders.
Just finshed writing up the decoder install and resizing all the photos. I'll start uploading to the dcc section after work tomorrow. Bernard - the 3 decoder setup is fun isn't it. The end result is worth it though and it only costs about the same as dcc'ing a double header since the function only decoders are cheaper.
MrPig - What decoders did you use for the head & tail lights? I used the digitrax TF4 and had problems with the address. I followed the directions of setting it up to my system giving it an address before installing it but when I did I got and Error 2 from my Lenz 100 system. Do you know what I might have done wrong?
Decoder install is posted in the dcc section http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=107445 Bernard - I have been using the Lenz LF101XF. I was using this because you don't need to use the blue wire. The yellow and white can be set up to swap polarity on direction change, just as if the lights were getting power straight from the rails on dc. I am about to try the TCS FL4 (smaller and cheaper). I looked into using the TF4 but the instructions indicate that white can only be set to F0, not F0F and yellow doesn't even have an F0 option. With the Lenz and TCS decoders, white and yellow can be assigned to F0F and F0R for automatic direction change. I am not familiar with the Lenz 100 system, I am a Digitrax user. If you are getting this error while trying to read CV's on the programming track, I might be able to help. I have discovered that my system won't read CV's on the programming track if there are 2 decoders on there at the same time, even if using the decoder lock feature. I set all 3 to the same address and assign cv15,16 to 1 for the motor, 3 for the head end and 4 for the tail end. This one took quite a while to figure out. I can't read CV's if there are any un-chipped end cars on the program track at the same time. Not sure why this is because interior car lighting dos not seem to affect it.
