Update 3/16/13: Ok, my graphs (and some conclusions drawn from them) had a serious flaw. I’d modeled both the growth and decay curves incorrectly, and this caused current to drop to zero in a lot of situations where it wouldn’t have. Don provided an interesting simulator model, which led me to do some more reading and correct my model. It’s still not complete, but rather than re-do this post, I’m adding a new one that is the correction. I’ll leave this one here for history’s sake, but please see the new one.
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Tags: DCC, Design, Kato, Micro Ace, Errors, PWM

Edit: see the comments for some additional notes; also, I’ve edited the text to correct some errors, but those edits are marked.

A long time ago, in a distant land, titans met to do battle...no, wait, I mean recently, on my kitchen table, I started testing DCC motor decoders for N-scale EMUs. And as with most wars, after it started I began wondering why on earth I’d thought it was a good idea. Still, I have reasons for this, and the result is important: the winning candidate will go in my (so far) 27 trains that don’t support Kato’s plug-in decoders, and some have two motor cars, so it’s closer to 30 decoders.
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Tags: Kato, Digitrax, Lenz, TCS, DCC, Micro Ace

Up until now I’ve been concentrating on my Kato models as far as DCC conversion goes, and at the same time I’ve only really paid attention to the interior lighting of those cars. Now that I’m working up to large-scale DCC conversion of my non-Kato stock, which is mostly MicroAce and Greenmax at this point, I need to think about lighting the interior of those cars.

And it turns out, they’re pretty much identical. Both MicroAce and Tomix make their own interior lighting kits, and they’re very similar. A third-party company, F&MOKEI also makes lightboards, and claims they work with both manufacturers’ cars. And Greenmax notes compatibility of its cars with Tomix lights (Tomix is far larger a company than MicroAce, so it makes sense they only mention one).
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Tags: DC, DCC, Lighting, Micro Ace, Tomix, Greenmax

’m turning my attention to the cab car decoder install now, and a recent discussion with Don along with a question from a reader had me thinking about potential problems with DCC conversion of N-scale EMU cars with cab lighting. And the one that really worried me was overvoltage from high DCC track voltages, and its harmful (fatal) effect on LEDs. DCC decoders essentially pass track voltage (minus a small bit) through to their function outputs.
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Tags: DCC, Digitrax, E231, Micro Ace, Greenmax, NMRA, Zephyr, RRampMeter, Lenz

Although the rest of my decoder order still hadn’t arrived, I decided to start work on my first wire-in motor decoder, to let me get some experience with the installation process, and to do some more experimentation. I used the Micro Ace Sobu E231 as previously planned, and to start with, a DZ125 decoder from Digitrax.
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Tags: Digitrax, DCC, Micro Ace, E231, Bachrus, Zephyr, PWM

As noted last time, I’m going to (finally) install DCC decoders in some of my commuter (and other) trains that aren’t Kato “DCC Friendly” designs, meaning I have to use wire-in decoders. And since these are EMUs where the motor car is in the middle of the train, that means installing three decoders per train, a Motor Decoder and two “function-only” decoders for the cab cars.

But to start with, I need to set up my workspace since it’s been a while since the last decoder install, and the various elements had all moved off the bench to other uses. And the bench had filled up with important stuff (meaning junk I couldn’t stuff somewhere else), so I needed a better workspace. Besides, I’m going to want to sit down for this work, and the workbench is really better for standing work. Read More...

Tags: DCC, JMRI, Kato, DE10, Digitrax, Bachrus, Micro Ace, E231

As any regular reader knows, the JR East E231 is the train the sparked my interest in Japanese trains, and in particular in the commuter trains of Tōkyō. I’m not really clear why myself. Objectively they’re simply boxes engineered to move large numbers of people rapidly. Perhaps it’s the simple functionalism of the design, coupled with the fact that it represents the culmination of fifteen years of re-engineering the commuter train, begun by the Japanese National Railway in the 80’s, and leading through several intermediate designs to one that now numbers over 2,700 cars. The E231 is hardly the end; evolved designs are already out there in the E233 and the prototype E331 (Japanese Wikipedia). But with the E231, JR East reached a point where the design achieved the original goal of “half the cost, half the life”, meaning a reduction in both initial cost and maintenance, at the expense of a reduced lifespan (15 years versus 30).

The E231 has been produced in many variants, but one of the most interesting lacked a model until now, the E231-800. This train, of which only seven 10-car trains were made, was produced to provide run-through service from JR East’s Chūō-Sōbu Line to the Tōkyō Metro Tōzai subway line. These replaced older 301 and 103 series trains dating from the 1960’s. For this use, the standard E231 body was reduced from 2.95m to 2.80m, giving the front a more squared-off appearance. Also, end doors were added to the cabs for in-tunnel emergency exits.
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Tags: E231, Micro Ace, Subway

Railroading in Tōkyō isn’t just huge railway stations and double-track commuter lines bringing people into the city from hours away, there are a number of much smaller railways, serving neighborhoods, industrial areas, or what have you. The photo above (from flickr, photographer: haribote) shows one of these, the Keisei-Kanamachi Line, (see also Japanese wikipedia) a mostly single-track line running 2.5 km through a residential neighborhood of Katsushika City, one of Tōkyō’s 23 special wards (which formed the original city of Tōkyō). The line runs due north from where it meets the Keisei Main Line at Keisei-Takasago station. The last station is adjacent to JR East’s Kanamachi Station on the Jōban Line.
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Tags: Freight, Micro Ace, Greenmax, Kato, Commuter

You’d think someone who’s built a Tōkyō-inspired model railroad with a subway on it would know a bit about the subways of Tōkyō. But in fact when I started construction I knew next to nothing, and I’ve only recently begun to rectify that. Part of the reason is that I’ve been focused on the commuter trains of JR East, and JR doesn’t operate any subway lines (although they do operate a couple of subway trains, as we’ll see in a bit). And part of it was that models of subway trains weren’t all that common, and I hadn’t collected any.
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Tags: Greenmax, Subway, Micro Ace, Kato, E231, Subway Train

Back in October when I wrote about Joyful Trains I mentioned Micro Ace was coming out with models of three of them, and I’d placed reservations. Well, they finally arrived, and that’s given me reason to write about them. As I write this, Hobby Search still has two of these in stock, although the Hana has already sold out.
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Tags: 48x Series, Joyful Train, Micro Ace, Kato

So, what is a “5 pole” motor, and why should I care if my models have one? And do they? That question occurred to me a few weeks back, and I’ve been doing a bit of reading since then. What I discovered was a mixture of fact and Internet lore of uncertain origin. I also discovered that some models do have “5 pole” motors, while others have “3 pole” ones. But oddly, at least in the case of Kato (and possibly also Micro Ace), the “3 pole” motors are the better ones. Or at least the newer ones, although I think they’re better too.
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Tags: DC, DCC, Kato, Micro Ace, E231, DE10

The train that got me started in Japanese modeling was the JR East E231, and specifically a Kato model of the Yamanote line version. The E231 is a workhorse of the Tōkyō scene, with over 2,600 cars built since its introduction in 1998, gradually displacing many older commuter and suburban trains to secondary uses or the scrap pile. The train itself is a DC design, typically used in 10-car trains, although the Yamanote line uses 11-car trains and some suburban lines use 10+5 sets that split into 10-car and 5-car trains away from the city. Internal seating is along-the-wall in commuter models, and a mix of that and transverse “booth” seats in suburban ones. In both applications, this is a no-frills train designed to move masses of people efficiently. The Chūō line commuter trains (which use the later E233 variant on Rapids and the Chūō-Sōbu E231 on Locals) carry over 90,000 people per hour at peak hours, in standing-so-close-you-can’t-move crowds.

Kato, Tomix and Micro Ace all make models of these, but not all of them model every variant. Kato tends to model the “current” consists in use on major lines, but they have some gaps. One significant one is that Kato has no model of the Sōbu Local (aka., Chūō-Sōbu) E231-0 version. Tomix has modeled many of the standard versions as well as a couple of specialized ones. And Micro Ace has modeled several specialized variants.
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Tags: Kato, Micro Ace, E231

It was a busy day in the village overlooking the Sumida River. A steady parade of trains rolled by on the embankment: commuter trains bringing workers to the city, resort trains taking vacationers away, and freights carrying commodities to and from the ports on Tōkyō Bay. But then, all days are busy on the railroads of Tōkyō.
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Tags: Video, Micro Ace, Kato, Operation, Freight