kato power bogie spare parts

[cteno4]

Do i remember right that the kato power bogie sets come as pairs of bogies, correct?

i have a pair of melted down m250 bogies i need to replace...

cheers

jeff

[JRF-1935]

Jeff
  Don't tell me that !!    I love My M250  Super Rail Cargo train.  What Happened? 
Rich C

[cteno4]

yes its sad, we have about one a year on the jrm layout at shows do this. it picked a point in a partially hidden location and no one noticed the train stalled for a while. must have shorted the point and it does not take long to melt the plastic trucks enough to ruin them...

i am installing the car light short detector system for the next show now! that will both alert us there is a short quicker and also the bulb takes up most of the voltage when there is a short and thus less chance of melting down the truck...

good news is kato USA said they would do a proxy order for the part from kato japan. so it looks like kato usa and kato japan are playing with each other on parts again.

im pretty sure these come in pairs as i remember the 800 coming in a set of two when i got a stripped drive shaft on that one.

cheers

jeff

[JRF-1935]

yes its sad, we have about one a year on the jrm layout at shows do this. it picked a point in a partially hidden location and no one noticed the train stalled for a while. must have shorted the point and it does not take long to melt the plastic trucks enough to ruin them...

i am installing the car light short detector system for the next show now! that will both alert us there is a short quicker and also the bulb takes up most of the voltage when there is a short and thus less chance of melting down the truck...

good news is kato USA said they would do a proxy order for the part from kato japan. so it looks like kato usa and kato japan are playing with each other on parts again.

im pretty sure these come in pairs as i remember the 800 coming in a set of two when i got a stripped drive shaft on that one.

cheers

jeff

Jeff
That makes sense, unfortunately, because of the partially hidden location that no one noticed the stalled train.  When you get the replacement part # let me know, just in case.  Hope she's running again soon.
Regards,
Rich C

[Martijn Meerts]

I have to say, I've been driving digital (Selectrix, DCC, Marklin Motorola, MFX) for about 11 or 12 years now, and never had any bogies melt due to shorts. I have had several trains catch fire because of overheating decoders due to a short though ;)

[cteno4]

I have to say, I've been driving digital (Selectrix, DCC, Marklin Motorola, MFX) for about 11 or 12 years now, and never had any bogies melt due to shorts. I have had several trains catch fire because of overheating decoders due to a short though ;)

Youch! ill take a couple of melted bogies over a fire! never had any flames on a layout in my experience! dont like the idea of flames in the house like that... one fire when i was a kid when our furnace blew up, but luckily we were not at home. not a fun experience.

i am also thinking of putting in a low firing 1-2a fuse as well as the light bulb so that it will pop after a short time if its not caught right away. the last thing is a new emergency power cut off. i have a bunch of old X10 remote control ac gear so im going to rig up a relay on the main ac power with some emergency buttons we can velcro around the layout to shut everything off in case of an accident. at times one shinkansen will derail an someone cant stop the second in time and we have a very dramatic pile up! while spectacular they can result in stripped drive shafts...

the short meltdowns are understandable as the bogie plastics tend to be soft plastic and the wheels are right up against them with a large surface area to transfer heat. its not like they are melted to the point of liquid, just end up sagging enough to gum up the works so the wheels and gears are either jammed or barely can run...

meltdowns only happens maybe once in 400 hours of train time on the jrm layout. again its usually as the train is not noticed for a while as we get talking with folks all the time. we really should be more diligent probably and always have an operating engineer keeping close tabs on the trains, but then they will run great for hours and folks want to chat... how safety records are ruined! perhaps we need a sign that has a tally of our safety record and give a body count to each wreck, maybe the public humiliation would make us do better! actually the public loves to see a shinkansen wreck!

cheers

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

The newer dcc systems shut down real quick when they detect a short. The ECoS for example will shut down almost instantly when there's a short. Some of the older systems handle shorts differently. For example the Selectrix command station my father uses doesn't shut down at all when there's a short, and that actually caused the fires.

Fr the JRM layout, you should have a train graveyard display case with all the trains that have kicked the bucket :)

[cteno4]

Fr the JRM layout, you should have a train graveyard display case with all the trains that have kicked the bucket :)

actually all trains that have been broken have been successfully repaired so far! takes some ingenuity at times, we have a tomix 300 that is running happily with a drive shaft from a kato 800 i had a spare for! we had a rash or drive shafts stripping for some reason a few years back and i then kept buying tomix drive shafts (you get 2-4 for like $2) when i would do an order and now have about 10 different sized ones, but then none have stripped lately, except i think i now have a kato 700 that stripped i have to tear into...

meltdowns are horrible on microace as you cant get spare parts. the second year of jrm my doreamon melted down (only other one i had do this). i was crushed. luckily doug came to the rescue and did be a huge favor of sending in the car to microace thru his contact in japan and it got repaired! its one of my dearest trains!

cheers

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Hmmm, you don't happen to have a drive shaft for a Tomix EF510 I guess? I lost one a while ago, and with only 1 drive shaft the thing has no pulling power left :)

Can't find spares on any of the Japanese stores either, even though spares are listed in both regular and spare part catalogs ..

[cteno4]

Martijn,

you can pop the stripped one in an envelope and mail it over ill see if any i have are close enough. i found it hard to find the parts directly when i searched for the 300 so i started buying different sized tomix ones when HS would have them. there are even a couple that have an interlocking shaft so you can make the shaft different lengths!

cheers

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

It's not stripped, it's actually completely missing ;)

My father bought an EF510 a while ago, and he had some initial problems with it. It fried 3 decoders before frying the motor as well. I ordered a new motor for it at JapanModelRailways, but that took ages. So, I ordered a motor at HS. In the meantime however, I moved back to the Netherlands, and sometime during the move I guess the little box I kept the motor and shafts in got bumped open or something. Anyways, 1 of the shafts went missing. I bought an EF510 for myself as well, so I used a shaft from that one in my father's EF510.

This is the shaft in question: http://item.rakuten.co.jp/mid-9/1m-tomixjf11/

I guess HS can get it as well, I just haven't asked yet, because it's really no hurry or anything. It's not like I don't have any other loco's :)