Kato EF58-61 decoder install

[Martijn Meerts]

One of the best running locomotives I have is Kato's EF58-61. It's one of the locomotives used to pull the emperor's train at one time or another, so it might be that Kato gave it a little extra attention. It's also one of the locomotives that pulled the Orient Express when it visited Japan, and this is also the reason why I bought it.

The install was pretty straightforward. The shell didn't want to come off at first, but the tabs that keep it in place are fairly large, and right near the front and rear of the train, so the shell needed to be bent quite a bit before the tabs got enough clearance. After that though, it was a fairly standard Kato affair. I'm pretty sure it can fit some or the other Digitrax drop in decoder, but I went with a wired install using a Lenz Silver+ Mini.


Image 01:
Shell removed. You can see the circuit board, which looks standard Kato and a good candidate for a drop in replacement. Also notice the little green tab at the front of the locomotive. It's a magnet, and it has these on both sides. No clue why they're there though =)

Image 02:
Circuit board removed, revealing the copper pickup strips and the plastic cage keeping the motor in place.

Image 03:
Pickup strips and plastic cage removed, revealing a 5-pole motor with 2 rather massive flywheels (no wonder it runs so silky smooth :)) and the worm gears. There's also the 2 copper tabs sticking up from the motor, these are normally connected to the circuit board. Since we don't really need them to be that long, I tend to shorten them and solder the wires for the motor to the tabs.

Image 04:
The entire thing taken apart (well, not entirely, the bogies are still in 1 piece). The frame is 1 piece and quite heavy. The motor is fairly big, and also quite heavy because of the flywheels.

Image 05:
The front wheels removed from the bogie. It's actually quite a strange construction with this mini-bogie connected to the front of the actual bogie. I guess it's to make sure it can get through curves reasonably well (minimum radius is 249mm according to Kato.) Also note the difference between the standard Arnold coupler and the (included) knuckle coupler.

[Martijn Meerts]

Image 06:
Close up of the grey wire soldered to the shortened copper tab of the motor. The orange wire is connected in the exact same way.

Image 07:
Grey and orange wires run through the holes originally used for the motor tabs. I made the holes slightly larger so the wires wouldn't get squashed when the circuit board is put back in its place. I also soldered red and black wires to the copper pickup strips. I did the soldering before putting the copper strips back onto the plastic cage btw ;)

Image 08:
The circuit board with wires for front light, rear light and common anode soldered on. There was a capacitor to the left of the resistor (the tiny black thing close to where the blue wire is soldered to the circuit board) which I removed. I cut the copper trace just below where the blue wire is soldered to the board, as well as directly left of the yellow wire (hard to see) and to the right of the white wire. This is to isolate the lighting circuitry from the power pickup. I also had to flip 1 of the LEDs (they're on the bottom of the circuit board, right at the edges) to make sure I had a common anode.

Image 09:
The decoder in its final resting place. I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the decoder in place without the shell on ... It's a tight fit, but a fit nevertheless. The hole will be covered by some roof detail.

Image 10:
A rather crappy picture of the loco completely re-assembled. Now I just need to add the detail bits :)

[KenS]

Also notice the little green tab at the front of the locomotive. It's a magnet, and it has these on both sides. No clue why they're there though =)

At a guess, that's to hold the headmark.  I don't have any loco-hauled passenger trains yet, but I've seen references to magnetic headmarks somewhere.

[Martijn Meerts]

Also notice the little green tab at the front of the locomotive. It's a magnet, and it has these on both sides. No clue why they're there though =)

At a guess, that's to hold the headmark.  I don't have any loco-hauled passenger trains yet, but I've seen references to magnetic headmarks somewhere.

Ah, I should check it out. It does include the emperor's headmark/flags thingy. Don't think I'd feel comfortable running a loco where the headmark isn't glued on though, it's asking for derailment trouble if/when the headmark decides to fall off =)